In this study two- and three-dimensional finite element welding simulations have been carried out. The welded component studied is a T-type fillet weld which is frequently used in the heavy vehicle machine industry with plate thicknesses of eight and 20 mm, respectively. The software's used for the welding simulations is MSC.Marc and ANSYS. The objective is to study the formation of the residual stresses due to 3D effect of the welding process. Moreover, welding simulations using solid models and contact models in the un-fused weld roots were carried out in order to investigate the possible effect with respect to the residual stresses. Residual stress measurements were carried out using X-ray diffraction technique on the manufactured T-welded structure. The 2D residual stress predictions shows good agreement with measurements, hence the 2D welding simulation procedure is suitable for residual stress predictions for incorporation in further fatigue crack growth analysis from weld defects emanating from the weld toe and the un-fused root.

Press hardened steels are commonly used as a lightweight choice for manufacturing car components because of the high ratio of strength to weight. The use of ultra-high-strength steels for the design of lightweight vehicles contributes to the reduction of emissions of carbon dioxide while maintaining passenger safety. Stamping tools used in press hardening processes suffer harsh contact conditionsin terms of dramatic temperature changes, cyclic loadings, and complex interactions between coatings and oxidation. In mass production, tool wear is an inevitable problem that increases maintenance costs. Severe adhesive wear, also called galling, substantially occurs in the stamping tool used against Al—Si-coated workpieces. The galling that takes place during press hardening not only degrades the production quality but also shortens the service life of the tool. In order to properly arrange tool maintenance and minimize galling through adjusting process parameters, engineers need to know when and where galling occurs, based on modelling of the galling in press hardening simulations. In order to implement a galling simulation for press hardening, a modified Archard wear model is employed in the present study, which is a contact-mechanics-based model. The specific wear rate in the model is calibrated by the quantitative galling measurements of a high-temperature tribometer test. The tribological test is designed to mimic the press hardening conditions, where the correlations between galling and process parameters such as temperature, pressure, and sliding distance are outlined. The galling simulation is implemented in a full-scale press hardening experiment, and the predicted galling is validated in terms of severe galling positions and galling profiles. The galling profile evolution is correlated to variations in the contact conditions. Uncertainties in the numerical model, such as the choice of penalty scaling factor and friction coefficient, are analysed with a parameter study and discussed. This study demonstrates finite element (FE) simulations involving galling prediction in press hardening so as to improve product development and production efficiency.

Dam failures are catastrophic events and in order to improve safety, engineers must have good tools for analysis and an understanding of the failure process. Since there are few cases of real failures in concrete dams, which can work as validation, physical model tests are a good way of improving numerical models and the understanding of the failure process. In this article, a physical model test of the buttress from a concrete Ambursen type dam is used as a benchmark for calibrating a FE-model. The dam failure is thereafter simulated using the concept of safety commonly used in the design codes. The advantages and drawbacks of performing load- and displacement-controlled simulations are compared. A new method for performing displacement-controlled simulations, using nonlinear springs to introduce the hydrostatic pressure and ice load is thereafter suggested and tested. The proposed method gives results which corresponds to the classical methods of analysis but has some advantages. Primarily, the new method is stable and does not suffer from convergence issues as was the case with the other methods. It is also simple to introduce in most commercial software compared to classical displacement-controlled simulations.

Handling of granular materials like rocks, pebbles and sand can expose equipment to abrasive wear that can result in local failure. In some cases this can have far reaching economic significance such as the costs of replacement, the costs from machine downtime and lost production. Models for predicting wear can be found from lab scale tests, but are difficult to apply in large scale applications. An important property is the flow behaviour of granular material during its transportation in a granular material handling system. In order to effectively predict abrasive wear in large scale applications, models for solid structure, granular material flow and wear behaviour have to be coupled. In this work; the finite element method is used to model the structure of the tipper body and the discrete element method is used to model the granular material. To couple the structure response to granular flow behaviour a contact model is used. A calibration of the wear constant in Archard's wear law is obtained from measurement data of rotating drum tests, using the representative material combination used in a tipper unloading case. This wear model is then used in a full scale tipper body simulation to predict the absolute wear and validated against field measurement. A good agreement between numerical calculation and field measurement regarding the spatial position and size of wear areas were found. This combination of numerical methods gives new possibilities to understand the wear process and is one step towards more physically correct models for large scale predictions between tipper bodies and granular material. Numerical tools can give future opportunities to optimise material selections and geometry with the intension to increase functionality, life of large scale wear applications and avoid local failure.

This study aimed to develop a multi-objective approach for reducing the positional errors in geometry measurements of track as a linear asset. Accordingly, we evaluated and compared two alignment methods – recursive segment-wise peak alignment (RSPA) and modified correlation optimised warping (MCOW). Furthermore, a novel rule-based approach was introduced to avoid data loss while aligning the datasets of the measurements of linear assets. A case study was conducted to implement and assess the performance of these methods in reducing the positional errors in track geometry measurements. The results revealed that the rule-based method preserves all the single defects present in the datasets. Furthermore, RSPA outperforms MCOW when aligning peaks, whereas MCOW is more efficient when all the data points in the datasets have equal priority.

The main purpose of condition monitoring in gear systems is to facilitate condition-based maintenance (CBM) by detecting the degradation of components, e.g. gear teeth, before the occurrence of a failure which could result in a malfunction of the whole gearing system and a reduction of the system availability. The role of vibration-based condition monitoring is to detect any change in the dynamic response related to changes in the structural integrity or the excitation forces. The early detection of a degraded gear allows a properly scheduled shutdown, which could prevent catastrophic failures with cascading effects and consequently result in safer operation and a reduced maintenance cost. The current article reviews the methods applied for gear tooth fault detection using vibration analysis, with an emphasis on tooth fault modelling and dynamic simulation. The article concludes with a brief discussion of the methods and models that have been used during the past few decades.

For the purpose of vibration-based condition monitoring and to prevent occurrence of catastrophic gear failures it is important to improve the simulated dynamic response of the studied gear model. The time varying gear mesh stiffness will contribute to the dynamic response of a geared system. Some previously applied methods for stiffness calculation, described in the literature, show good agreement with the results obtained with FEM simulation for smaller crack sizes. However, when larger crack sizes are reached, these methods show an increasing deviation from FEM simulation results. A reduction in the gear mesh stiffness can be considered to assess the status of tooth damage and, therefore, by increasing the accuracy of the calculated mesh stiffness, dynamic simulations of a gear can be improved. In this paper a new method is presented for calculating the gear mesh stiffness for a propagating crack in the tooth root. The influence of gear mesh stiffness on the vibration-based fault detection indicators, the RMS, kurtosis and the crest factor, is investigated. Different crack sizes are examined by using this new method for sizes up to around 50% of the total tooth root thickness. When compared to FEM simulations, the presented method shows more accurate results for calculations of the gear mesh stiffness (for the studied model) than the previously suggested methods.

The paper is aimed at finding the likely failure mechanism of a bridge roller bearing made of high strength martensitic stainless steel. Spectroscopy and finite element stress analysis of the roller indicated that an initial radial surface crack, found at an end face of the roller and close to the contact region, was induced by stress corrosion cracking (SCC). The initial crack subsequently changed shape and increased in size under growth through fatigue and finally formed a quarter-circle radial crack centred on the end face corner of the roller. Numerically computed stress intensity factors for the final crack showed that crack loading was predominantly in Mode II. For a crack size as observed on the fracture surface, the maximum service load, as specified by the manufacturer, enhanced by a certain roller bearing misalignment effect, was sufficient for failure through fracture.

In metal forming operations such as form fixture hardening, the interaction between the tools and the work-piece is strongly influenced by the tribological properties at the interface. Damage or excessive wear of the tools can be detrimental to the quality of the final component and it also has an impact on the process economy due to increased maintenance or more frequent replacement of tools. The objective of this study was to investigate the damage mechanisms encountered in real form fixture hardening tools in order to understand the causes of tool failure and ultimately to come up with possible solutions for this problem.Advanced techniques such as Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM), Energy Dispersive Spectroscopy (EDS) were used for obtaining an in-depth understanding of the different phenomena involved in the failure of form fixture hardening tools. Two different tools having different hardness values and microstructures that had been used in production were analysed.The damage mechanisms found included abrasive and adhesive wear, material transfer, corrosion and mechanical and thermal fatigue. The main damage mechanism was found to be cracking caused by mechanical stresses on the surface. Although both tools presented similar types of damage, the severity was different and it was strongly influenced by the microstructure.

Rotary kilns for iron-ore pellets production are highly dependent on a well-functioning refractory brick lining. To improve the long-term capability of the lining, in-situ observations of the bricks' performance are desired, however, the high process temperatures and the size of the kiln make it difficult to study the lining during operation. By using numerical simulations as a tool, some of the problems encountered by the brick lining can be studied. Knowing material properties of the refractory bricks as input in a numerical model is therefore necessary. However, material properties are poorly documented for this type of materials, especially, at elevated temperatures. In this work three commercial aluminasilicate bricks were tested in compression until failure for a temperature range of 25–1300 °C. The purpose was to evaluate compression strength and Young's modulus in compression of the fully burned bricks at a wide range of temperatures. The data was later used for modelling of a hot rotary kiln lined with bricks by using the finite element method, whereupon load state of the lining was evaluated at steady state after the expansion of the system. The objective of the numerical modelling was to investigate trustworthiness of the model and to give insight into the stress levels that can potentially arise. It was found that for all of the investigated brick types the compression strength increased with increased temperature, having a peak in the vicinity of 1000 °C. The maximum increase was between 50 and 150 % for the different brick types. After passing 1100 °C the compression strength rapidly and considerably decreased below its as-received compression strength. Young's modulus was measured to vary between 2 and 10 GPa in the range of up to 1000 °C. The numerical results indicate that severe boundary conditions (expansion of the lining is highly restricted) can potentially lead to compression stress of up to 34 MPa in the brick lining at steady state. However, at these boundary conditions the present tensile stress was only 0.5 MPa, while tensile stresses of close to 3 MPa could be observed in the lining with mild boundary conditions. The authors conclude that the created model is trustworthy and that it has high potential for being used as a tool in further investigations of the lining in hot state.

Rotary kilns for iron-ore pellets production are highly dependent on a well-functioned refractory brick lining. To improve the long-term capability of the lining, in-situ observations of the bricks' performance are desired, however, the harsh environment inside the rotary kiln makes it difficult or nearly impossible to study the lining during operation. By using numerical simulations as a tool, some of the problems encountered by the brick lining can be studied without limitation of the extreme conditions.

In this work, stress state of the lining was studied under the influence of different heating and cooling rates, and different brick compaction cases. A finite element model was created for conducting the numerical simulations. The numerical model was calibrated for transient heat transfer. Temperature dependent material properties of the bricks and casing were used as input. The heating and cooling was controlled by temperature prescription on the boundary of the brick lining, while brick lining compaction by defining relative position of the bricks in axial and radial directions.

The conducted numerical simulations showed that considerable tensile stress may appear in a large area of the brick during initial heating stage. The large tensile area corresponds well with the typical circumferential cracks experienced by the bricks. It was demonstrated that the compressive stresses counteract the development of tensile stresses. However, the compressive stresses may become very large in the initial stage of heating. The positive effect of lower heating rate was considerable on the tensile stresses, while influence on the compressive stresses was almost unnoticed. The hypothetical cooling rates showed that very high tensile stresses may occur on the surface of the bricks, potentially leading to surface spalling. Furthermore, it was demonstrated that axial compaction is highly important on the stress development in the lining, which, may not always be followed in practice. As a general conclusion, it is recommended to always achieve a tight compaction of the brick lining and to take measures for lowering the heating and cooling rates.

The conducted work exemplifies behaviour of the brick lining for realistic heat transfer and material properties. The insight into the behaviour gives possibilities to make adjustments and directed investments for lowering risk of brick lining failure.

Severe degradation of refractory lining in a rotary kiln often leads to very costly production delays. Use of finite element analysis for understanding the mechanisms behind the failure of the lining is poorly reported in this field. To increase the knowledge and to update the field a simplified model of a kiln and a new methodology for studying stability of the lining are suggested. Behaviour of the lining in cold state – in static and dynamic cases – is studied. Influence of ovality, brick's Young's modulus and friction coefficient on stress and brick displacement are evaluated at two rotational speeds. It was found that the induced loads in the lining are harmless regardless of the tested conditions — challenging the traditional beliefs. On the other hand, recorded brick displacements were found to be significantly affected by rotational speed and ovality. Gaps as large as 80 mm could be observed between the bricks and the casing in a worst case scenario. An integrity coefficient was defined in order to quantify overall integrity of the lining.

The suitability of using high performance steel (S700MC) for road restraint systems (RRS) under very high containment level was evaluated in this study. To investigate the influence of the crash on the mechanical behaviour of the steel, different test pieces were tested by tensile and hardness testing, and examined by scanning electron microscopy (SEM). The tensile test results of S700MC showed a noticeable increase in yield strength at 0.2% elongation (Rp0.2) from 744 to 935 MPa, and ultimate tensile strength (UTS) from 810 to 1017 MPa, before and after crash tests (BC and AC, respectively). S700MC showed ~9% lower elongation at fracture value in comparison with S275JR and S355JR steels. Besides, fracture toughness, was significantly higher for S700MC (133 and 148 MJ/m3 for BC and AC, respectively) compared to conventional mild steels (108–118 MJ/m3). Microstructural observations of head-part of all S700MC samples revealed equi-axed grains. The fracture surface of tensile tested samples before crash, showed elongated grains accompanied by pore formation. Among after crash samples, one test piece showed intergranular cracks while no intergranular cracks were observed for the other crashed pieces which resulted in the lower Rp0.2 (813 MPa) and UTS strength (847 MPa) and fracture toughness (125 MJ/m3). The results showed that although RRS manufactured with S700MC undergoes severe mechanical deformation, the risk of brittle fracture is very low and this is beneficial from industrial as well as social point of view.