Energy 35 (2010) 461467

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Energy
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/energy

Optimization of welding joint between tower and bottom ange based on residual
stress considerations in a wind turbine
Wenchun Jiang a, *, Qinshan Fan b, Jianming Gong c
a
College of Mechanical and Electronic Engineering, China University of Petroleum, Dongying 257061, PR China
b
Division of Mechanics, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing 210009, PR China
c
School of Mechanical and Power Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology, Nanjing 210009, PR China

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: In this study, a geometry optimization of welding joint between tower and bottom ange in a wind
Received 30 March 2009 turbine is performed based on residual stress considerations. A sequentially coupling nite element
Received in revised form analysis (FEA) program is developed to simulate the welding temperature and residual stress. Using this
21 August 2009
FEA program, four FE models with different bevel are developed to calculate their residual stresses,
Accepted 10 October 2009
Available online 4 November 2009
which are compared to optimize the weld geometry. The results show that complex residual stresses are
generated and concentrated in the llet weld. Using K type bevel with internal concave llet and outside
convex llet can obtain the minimal residual stress, which provides a reference the fabrication of wind
Keywords:
Wind turbine turbines.
Weld residual stress 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
FEA
Optimization

1. Introduction The strength design plays an important role in wind turbine.

The dependence of economy on depleting fossil fuels and the
adverse environmental effects of conventional power generation
systems create great interest in renewable energy sources [1,2].
Wind energy is the fastest growing energy source, expanding
globally at a rate of 2535% annually over the last decade [3]. A
wind turbine is a rotating machine that converts the wind energy
into electricity energy. Tower is one of the most important parts of
a wind turbine. Most large wind turbines are delivered with tubular
steel towers, which are manufactured in sections of 2030 m with
anges at either end, and bolted together on the site. Each tower
section is welded with a seam lengthwise, plus a circular welding
seam to connect the next section. Moreover, each tower section and
ange is jointed by welding. Residual stresses are invariably
generated in the weld [4,5], which have great effect on fatigue [6
8], strength [9], fracture [10,11] and failure [12,13] etc. Neutron
diffraction [14,15] and X-ray method [16,17] have been developed to
measure the welding residual stresses. However, the both methods
are much cost and complex. With the development of computer
technology, nite element method (FEM) has been used to predict
welding residual stresses successfully [1618].
Considerable efforts have been focused on the fatigue in wind
blades [1922]. Kong [23] proposed a structural design procedure
of a medium scale E-glass/epoxy composite wind turbine blade by
FEM. Inomata [24] measured the stresses on a wind blade to study
its performance, reliability, and durability. Marin [25] performed
a suitable conguration for repairing the damaged blades by FEM.
The above literatures [1925] are mainly focused on the wind
blades. However, little attention has been paid to the strength
analysis of wind towers. Welding residual stress is one of the key
factors that inuence the tower strength. Therefore, it is important
to predict and decrease the residual stress in the early age of
welding design for wind towers.
The present work presents a nite element analysis of residual
stress in the welding joint between the tower and bottom ange in
a wind turbine. Moreover, effect of weld geometry on residual
stress is discussed to optimize the bevel type, which can help to
assure the strength and safety operation of wind turbines.
2. Finite element model
2.1. Geometrical model

Fig. 1 shows a conical tower with the diameter increasing

* Corresponding author. Tel./fax: 86 25 83587290. towards the base in order to increase the strength and save mate-
E-mail address: jiangwenchun@126.com (W. Jiang). rials. It is with an external diameter of 4.30 m at the base and

0360-5442/$ see front matter 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.energy.2009.10.012
462 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467

Table 2
Thermal and mechanical properties.

Temperature Conductivity Specic heat CET E (GPa) m Yield

( C) (W. m/ C) (J/( C *kg)) (106/ C) strength
(MPa)
20 53.17 461 7.31 210 0.28 345
100 51.08 482 8.31 207 0.286 328
200 47.73 523 10.99 201 0.294 317
300 43.96 557 12.31 193 0.307 285
400 39.57 607 13.22 185 0.333 267
500 36.01 678 13.71 172 0.249 231
700 33 700 14.00 168 0.248 100
1500 33 700 14.00 2 0.223 2

Fig. 1. Geometrical model of a wind tower.

y
C

tower
x

17 13 18
14
bottom flange Fig. 4. The model for verication.
11 7 8 12 16
15
9 5 3 1 2 4 6 10
A B
internal concave llet and outside convex llet. The FE meshing is
shown in Fig. 3. 2-D plane strain model and quadrilateral elements
Fig. 2. Finite element model 1. with four nodes are used. 14 706 nodes and 14,378 elements are
meshed. The element type for temperature and residual stress is
DC2D4 and CPE4, respectively. The same meshing is used in the
temperature and residual stress simulation.

2.2. Material properties

The material of tower and bottom ange is Q345D. The chemical

compositions are listed in Table 1. The weld metal, bottom ange
and tower are assumed to have the same material properties. The

120
Teng's (x)
Fig. 3. FE Meshing. 100 Present method (x)
Teng's (z)
Residual stress (MPa)

80
2.56 m at the top. The shell thickness of the tower ranges from Present method (z)
60
26 mm at the base to 12 mm at the top. The whole tower is
composed of four sections connected by hubbed anges and bolts. 40
The weld of bottom ange and tower is designed as full penetration
of llet weld as shown in Fig. 1. In this paper, the welding residual 20
stress is simulated by ABAQUS software. A 2-D nite element model
named model 1 is presented in Fig. 2. The bevel is K type with 0

-20
Table 1 -40
Chemical composition of Q345D (in wt%). 0 20 40 60 80 100
C Si Mn S P Nb Cu Ni Cr Ti V Distance (mm)
0.13 0.32 1.33 0.029 0.025 0.026 0.009 0.010 0.008 0.003 0.003
Fig. 5. A comparison of Residual stress between Tengs and present method.
 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467 463

UI h
DFLUX (1)
Sv
where U is the voltage (28 V), I is current (180A); h is the arc
efciency (0.7); S is the cross section area of welding pass; v is the
weld speed (36 cm/min).
There are 18 welding passes in total as shown in Fig. 2. The
simulation of weld metal deposition is achieved by the function
of model change (remove and add). Before welding, the weld
metal elements are removed. Once the welding starts, the welded
pass is added and heated, then it is cooled down until the next
weld pass cycle begins. The temperature history of all the nodes
is stored in a le for the subsequent residual stress calculation.
Fig. 6. The temperature contour.
The material properties relevant to thermal analysis are density,
specic heat capacity, latent heat capacity, and solidus/liquidus
temperatures.
The welding temperature simulation is consisted of 36 steps in
temperature dependent thermal and mechanical properties are total, and each two steps represent the application of a weld pass.
shown in Table 2. In this study, the material is assumed isotropic, The application of each pass includes a series of time increments.
linear elastic and plastic. The maximum allowable change in temperature in an increment
has been set at 30  C.
2.3. Welding temperature analysis
2.4. Residual stress analysis
In the thermal analysis, the welding process is primarily simu-
lated by applying a distributed heat ux to the weld elements. The The residual stress is calculated by using the temperature
distributed heat ux, DFLUX, is calculated by distribution obtained from the thermal analysis as input data. The

a 1600
Node 1
Temperature(C)

1200

800

400

0
0 150 300 450 600
Time(s)

b 1600 c 1600
Node 2 Node 3
Temperature (C)
Temperature (C)

1200 1200

800 800

400 400

0
0
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)

d 1600 e 1600

Node 4 Node 5
Temperature(C)
Temperature(C)

1200 1200

800 800

400 400

0 0
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)

Fig. 7. The temperature history (a) Node 1 (b) Node 2 (c) Node 3 (d) Node 4 (e) Node 5.
464 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467

2.6. Error analysis

The size of the nite element mesh has a great effect on the
accuracy of the simulation results and computational time. To
examine the adequacy of the element size, the effect of mesh
renement is studied. A new model consisted of 16 725 elements
and 17 050 nodes is developed. It is found that there is very little
difference between the both results. Therefore, the original nite
element model with 14 378 elements and 14 706 nodes can be used
to calculate the temperature eld and residual stress.

2.7. Method verication

A T-joint llet model, the same as Tengs [26], is developed to

verify the FE method in this paper. Tengs model is chose because it
is similar to that of us. This model is shown in Fig. 4. We calculated
the residual stresses in the T-joint according to the same parame-
ters of Tengs. Fig. 5 presents a comparison of the residual stresses
computed by Teng and us. It is shown that the both results have
a good agreement. Therefore, the FE program developed here is
proved right, and it can be used for residual stress analysis in the
welding joint between tower and bottom ange.

3. Results and discussion

3.1. Temperature eld

Fig. 6 shows the temperature distribution when the third pass is

welded at the melting state. The temperature in the weld pool is
Fig. 8. The residual stress contour of model 1 (a) S11 (b) S22. 1430  C. Five different nodes located in Fig. 3 are picked to
investigate the whole temperature history. Fig. 7 shows the
temperature history of the nodes 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5. It can be seen that
function of model change used in section 2.3 has been also used in
the peak temperature is around 1430  C. Node 1 is on the surface
stress analysis. The material properties relevant to residual stress
of welding pass 1 and it suffers the most complex thermal cycle due
are elastic modulus, yield stress, Poissons ratio, and the coefcient
to the subsequent weld heating. Node 2 and 3 are on the surface of
of thermal expansion. Corresponding to the temperature eld, the
pass 5 and 7, respectively. Both thermal cycle is relatively simple
residual stress analysis is also composed of 36 steps.
than node 1. Node 5 lies on the surface of the last pass 17 and its
thermal cycle is the most simple. Node 4 is located on the surface of
2.5. Boundary and initial conditions
pass 15 and it experiences two thermal cycles. The rst thermal
cycle is generated for its own weld heating and the other is applied
The initial ambient temperature is 20  C. During the thermal
by the heat conduction of the weld heating of pass 17. It can be
analysis, convection and radiation are both taken into consider-
found that the welding of pass 17 has great effect on the temper-
ation. During the stress analysis, three nodes of A, B and C shown in
ature of the adjacent pass. The welding temperature history is very
Fig. 2 are constrained in X and Y-direction. Thus, the rigid body
complex and has great impact on the generation of residual stress.
motion is avoided.
3.2. Residual stress eld
S11
200 Residual stress components from FEA results are obtained in the
S22
following direction: (1) Radial stress S11, represents the stress in
the direction of tower radius; (2) Axial stress S22, refers the stress
Residual Stress (MPa)

100
in the axial direction of tower.
Fig. 8 presents the radial and axial stress distribution contour. It
0 can be seen that the stresses in the weld joint are complex and non-
uniform. The peak radial and axial stresses are 330 and 287 MPa,
which are located in lower and top toe as shown in Fig. 8,
-100 respectively.
Fig. 9 shows the residual stress distribution along path P shown
in Fig. 3. The axial stress shows tensile stress in the supercial layer
-200
of 6 mm thickness, and then it gradually turns to compressive in
the middle zone. The maximum tensile axial stress is on the weld
-300 surface, while the peak compressive axial stress is located at the
0 8 16 24 32 40 root. The radial stress along path P is tensile and shows a charac-
Distance (mm) teristic of wavy shape.
Fig. 10 presents the residual stresses variation with time for
Fig. 9. The residual stress distribution along path P. node 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5, respectively. It is shown that the development
 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467 465

a 400
S11
300
S22
200

Stress(MPa)
100
0
-100
-200
-300
0 150 300 450 600
Time(s)

b 400 c 400
S11 S11
300 S22 300 S22
200 200

Stress(MPa)
Stress(MPa)

100 100
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
-300 -300
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)

d 400 e 400
S11 S11
300 300
S22 S22
200 200
Stress(MPa)
Stress(MPa)

100 100
0 0
-100 -100
-200 -200
-300 -300
0 150 300 450 600 0 150 300 450 600
Time(s) Time(s)

Fig. 10. Residual stress history (a) Node 1 (b) Node 2 (c) Node 3 (d) Node 4 (e) Node 5.

of residual stress is very complex. Compared to Fig. 7, it is found 3.4. Discussion

that the stress change law is similar to that of temperature. The
generation of welding residual stress is dependent on the Fig. 14 shows the geometrical shape of a llet weld. A parameter
temperature history. of weld angle q is used to describe the concave or convex degree.
The calculation of q is set as following:

y cos 45
3.3. Optimization of the weld geometry q tg1 (2)
x  y cos 45
This section discusses the effect of weld geometry on the
residual stress, aiming to decrease the weld residual stress and
optimize the bevel geometry. Another three models with different
bevel shape are developed, which are shown in Fig. 11. Model 2 is
single-V bevel; model 3 is K bevel with double concave llet weld;
model 4 is K bevel with double convex llet weld.
Fig. 12 shows the radial stress contour of the three models. The
peak values are 356, 372, and 369 MPa, respectively. Fig. 13 gives
their axial stress contour, and the peak values are 376, 332, and
388 MPa, respectively. As shown in Fig. 8, the peak stresses of
model 1 are only 287 and 330 MPa, which are smaller than that of
the rest three models. It is shown that using model 1 with internal
concave llet and outside convex llet can get a smaller residual
a b c
stress distribution, which is helpful for increasing strength and Fig. 11. Three FE models with different bevel shape: (a) model 2; (b) model 3; (c)
promote the service life. model 4.
466 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467

Fig. 12. The radial stress contour: (a) model 2, (b) model 3, (c) model 4.
Fig. 13. The axial stress contour: (a) model 2, (b) model 3, (c) model 4.

when q is smaller than 45 , it is a concave llet weld; when q is 45, it is

a at llet weld; when q is bigger than 45 , it is a convex llet weld.
Jiang [27] did experiments to discuss the effect of weld angle on
the bearing capacity for llet weld. It is found that the bearing
capacity of concave llet is better than that of convex and at llet
weld. The crack length is increased with the weld angle increasing.
Mandox [28] found that the magnication factor of stress concen-
tration is increased with the weld angle increasing. Hence, the weld
residual stress concentration is increased with the increase of weld
angle, which can be used to explain why the residual stress in
model 3 is smaller than that in model 2 and 4.
It has been found that in section 3.1 that the posterior welding

passes have thermal effect on the previous welded adjacent passes.

The function of this thermal effect is equal to the post-welding heat

treat (PWHT), which can decrease the residual stress. For model 1
and 3, the same is that concave llet is used in the internal; while
the difference is that an outside convex llet is used in model 1. The
convex llet has a greater area than concave, which corresponds to
an increase in heat input. The increased heat input strengthens the
function of PWHT, which makes model 1 has a smaller residual
stress than model 3. Fig. 14. The geometrical shape of a llet weld.
 W. Jiang et al. / Energy 35 (2010) 461467
Although the FE model is built to the wind tower, the research
results also provide a reference for the similar engineering struc-
tures at the same time. The effect of welding residual stress on
fatigue should be discussed in depth for the wind turbine in future.
4. Conclusions
Based on FE program-ABAQUS, this study developed a sequential
coupling procedure to determine the residual stresses in the weld-
ing joint between tower and bottom ange in a wind turbine. The
development of welding temperature and residual stress history is
obtained. It is found that the generation of residual stress is
dependent on the temperature history. The residual stresses in the
welding joint are complex and non-uniform. The predicted residual
stress can be combined to the fatigue analysis for the wind tower.
Four nite element models with different bevel shape are
developed to decrease the residual stress and optimize the weld
geometry. The results show that the weld angle has great impact on
the residual stress for the llet weld. Using the K type bevel with
internal concave and outside convex llet weld can get the minimal
residual stress, which provides a reference for the welding and
fabrication of wind towers.
Acknowledgments
The authors gratefully acknowledge the support provided by
JiangSu Key Laboratory of Digital Manufacture for Industrial
Equipment and Control Technology in China.
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