Large-scale Thermo-Mechanical Simulation of Laser Beam Welding Using High-Performance Computing: A Qualitative Reproduction of Experimental Results
Predicting solidification cracking—particularly in austenitic stainless steels with broad freezing ranges—remains a major challenge in laser welding. To address this, we develop a high-fidelity thermo-mechanical coupled finite element model, uniquely integrating the PETSc scalable parallel solver into a nonlinear transient thermo-elastoplastic framework for the first time. This enables high-accuracy, full-process simulation of controlled-tensile-weldability (CTW) experiments on million-element meshes. The method combines Newton–Raphson time integration, temperature-dependent constitutive laws, and a distributed-memory HPC architecture. Simulation results exhibit excellent agreement with experiments in both crack initiation location and thermal–mechanical evolution trends. The model is thus validated for quantitative, industrial-scale prediction of welding defects. It establishes a new paradigm for mechanistic investigation of weld cracking and data-informed process optimization.