What’s new

Ansys 2024 R2, V242.4

• Save/Import Weld Configuration now uses one configuration file “WeldToolkit.json” instead of separate ones for strength and fatigue objects. Default path is changed to “user_files” instead of “Working Dir”, can be changed in Weld Settings.
• Bugfix when importing Weld Configuration “Tabular Editor” data to update analysis and result Ids.
• New Group Features for Fillet/Butt Welds: “Show Geometry” and “Show Id number”.
• New Virtual Fillet/Butt Welds to visualize welds and automate result creation.
• New automation context actions for Add Welds: Promote to Named Selection and Add Weld Strength.
• Updated Geometry Select with “Manual select weld part”.
• Removed Geometry Select option “Manual select with offset”. The Weld Offset is now always included in the evaluation.
• New weld Type option “Double sided” in Butt Weld Strength to account for partial penetration and correct bending stiffness.
• Updated Weld Strength Result Location to select where stress results are calculated.
• Improved Weld Graphics for welds to account for shell part thickness and selected Result Location.
• Improved error message when missing nodal forces.
• Check for new version can be enabled/disabled in Weld Settings.
• Bugfix for Weld Strength Result Item “Tnormal” and resulting “Wuf” in Double sided fillet welds coming from a sign error in the FZM calculation.

Ansys 2024 R1, V241.6

• Structural Stress Fatigue stress averaging option “Local/Section”.
• New Weld fatigue Settings option “Automatic Weld Fatigue Legend” to set “Reversed Rainbow” and/or “Logarithmic” depending on Result Item “Life”, “log10(Life)” or “Safety factor stress”.
• Use Weld Toolkit in Mechanical Stand-alone.
• New description and demo model for “Flare-Bevel Groove Weld” shown in the weld type section.
• Automatic check for new versions of the app and that the app is installed in correct Ansys version.
• New Active License status button in the toolbar that replace the “Licensing” menu.
• Import Weld Settings from selected previous version.
• New Weld Strength Result Item “Stotal”, also available in Structural Stress Fatigue.
• Structural Stress Fatigue also supports load types “Load Combination” and “Load Scanning”.
• CSV Stress Fatigue ignores blank lines and lines beginning with “#”.
• New Nominal Method Stress Type: “Shear (Max)”.
• New Hot-Spot Method Stress Types: “Shear (Max)”, “Principal (Normal)”, “Principal (Parallel)”.
• New Effective Notch Stress Types: “Parallel”, “Sum of Principal”, “Stress Intensity”, “Shear (Max)”.
• New Weld Fatigue Settings option “Signed stress range”.
• Updated support for Weld Strength Random Vibration and Response Spectrum analysis.
• New Weld Fatigue Load Type Random.
• Cumulative Damage supports element results (CSV and Structural stress fatigue).
• Bugfix creating “Add fillet weld” to sections connected to suppressed bodies.
• New fatigue verification section and updated fatigue verification models.
• Bugfix reading Material Grade parameters “alfaw”, “betaw”, “gammaM2” and “gammaL” if defined as “string” in a user defined Weld Strength code defined in “weldCodes.json”.
• Update on Mean stress theory to be available on all fatigue methods and load types. This update also resolves the issue if “Yield Limit” is undefined.
• Bugfix mapping the Effective Notch Stress to notch edge if the edge has additional vertices.

Ansys 2023 R2, V232.8

• Add butt weld types: “V-Butt intermittent” and “Bevel Butt intermittent”.
• Butt weld strength type: “Butt weld intermittent”.
• Updated Weld Toolkit tutorials.
• Bugfix Save Weld Configuration
• Bugfix for “zero result” evaluating weld strength results on circular edges with small segment angle on a cylindrical face.
• Bugfix for Optimize Bonded Contacts when using solid to shell contacts.
• Weld object worksheet preview to display object details and result summary tables.
• Weld Settings option Store Results At “Last Time Step” to speed up post processing.
• Child Setup let you re-use the butt and fillet welds setup from one linked parent analysis.
• GUI bugfix and general improvements.
• Rename “Min Thickness” to “Throat thickness”.
• Improved Weld Strength evaluation speed and removed storing weld force text files in Mechanical working directory.
• Improved Hot-Spot fatigue evaluation speed for faces with many nodes.
• Weld Strength Settings option Weld Force Extraction “Contact Element/Underlying Element”

Ansys 2023 R1, V231.7

• New Help menu with shortcuts to the online help.
• Weld report migrated to Report Generator.
• Bugfix Save Weld Configuration.
• Bugfix for double sided weld without weld elements. In some cases wrong stress for combined tension and bending was calculated due to the weld offset.
• Weld Strength according to AISC 360-16 now includes both the “ASD” and “LRDF” methods.
• Butt weld strength graphics bugfix causing error message: “Normalize zero length vector failed!…”
• Weld Settings control panel edit all preference and weld codes.
• Bugfix for duplicate weld strength result to not reset code and material to default values.
• A Weld Strength/Fatigue Child takes the pre-selected result object as the result parent, see Child Result.
• New Hot-Spot Method Stress Types: “Parallel, Shear, Equivalent (DNV)”.
• Hot-Spot Method stress type “Principal” is replaced by “Principal (IIW limit)” and “Principal (no limit)” and eliminates the property “Limit Principal” in Weld Settings.

Ansys 2023 R1, V231.1

• Bugfix for “Key error” on “Weld Strength Elem” results.
• Bugfix for weld strength results for shared topology with “Material assignment”.
• Bugfix for working on some network mounted drives that caused evaluation error.
• Bugfix for “Add weld” to not allow using same edge in two different welds.
• Weld Toolkit license is released after pressing solve.
• If Weld Toolkit license is not available for creating welds when pressing solve solution is aborted.
• Grouped Weld Strength result to combine butt and fillet weld strength results (from different linked analyses) in one plot to get an overview and/or to get the max or min from several different load cases.
• Weld Strength average Section (linear) in addition to the “Section (constant)”.
• Nominal fatigue method using shear stress (in addition to normal stress)
• Fatigue load case using Solution Combination from different analyses in the model tree.
• Fatigue load case using Solution Scanning from different analyses in the model tree.
• Cumulative damage Solution Editor to use loads from different analyses in the model tree.
• Grouped Weld Fatigue result to combine multiple fatigue results (from different linked analyses) in one plot to get an overview and/or to get the max or min from several different load cases.
• Weld Report figures can include weld line graphics.

Ansys 2022 R2, V222.2

• Bugfix; Nominal and Effective Notch method exclude results for elements connected to “cut boundary” and other displacement boundary conditions.
• Bugfix; Save binary extension with project overwrites app preference with default values.
• Bugfix; Add fillet weld on tet-meshed bodies in thermal analysis.
• Bugfix if using orthotropic material data for add fillet/butt welds.
• Bugfix save/import “Weld Strength Shell Elem” Configuration.
• Weld report image settings can be defined in report preference file (in Report Generator).
• Weld Strength property “Factor Aw” to be used in design resistance calculation.
• Weld Strength property Stress Type to use “Absolute Stress” or “Positive Stress” in Wuf calculation.
• Weld Strength post processing speed improved when using “Calculate Time History = Yes”.
• Eurocode 9 S-N curves (Design of aluminum structures)
• The FAT factor can be defined as a property in the S-N curves in the preference file.
• “Exclude boundary nodes” property for Nominal and Effective notch method.
• Structural Stress Fatigue using throat stress from a weld strength result.
• Hot-Spot method extrapolation type “Constant” (Haibach method) and stress types “Equivalent”.
• Effective Notch method updated with stress types “Tangential (default), Principal, Equivalent”.
• Weld Fatigue tutorials (in addition to existing Weld Strength tutorials).
• Bugfix; Weld Strength result for solid model using shared topology and same “Material assignment” on both parts in a weld joint show zero utilization.

Ansys 2022 R1, V221.1

• Bugfix to find current Ansys license for post proc.
• Nominal and Effective Notch method mesh quality calculation improved at shared edges.
• Nominal and Effective Notch method exclude results for elements connected to “cut boundary” and other displacement boundary conditions.
• Effective Notch method updated to use generic fillet geometry and plot result on notch edge.
• Detect and display errors messages from post processing MAPDL process in ACT log file.
• New Weld Toolkit Tutorials included in app download zip file.

Ansys 2021 R2, V212.3

• Improved “Add fillet weld” wireframe graphics.
• Added weld section “Id” number in graphics.
• Updated to current technology thermal elements.
• Hot-Spot fatigue automatic offset using weld toe.
• Hot-Spot extrapolation points and normal direction projected to non-planar faces.
• Hot-Spot fatigue option to post-process “unconnected” faces, e.g. from “Weld mesh” feature.
• Bugfix Weld Strength result material select.
• Bugfix named selection scoping after geometry update.
• Bugfix to make app work in Ansys 2020R1/R2.

Ansys 2021 R1, V211.1

• Combines all features from the previous apps “Weld Strength” and “Weld Fatigue”.
• Stress types τ_total and σ_parallel available as result and in weld code API.
• Weld offset effect in shell and solid models without weld elements can be included.
• Automatic shell part thickness calculation in Hot-Spot method.
• Improve error messages handling to remove messages when the issue is resolved.
• Improved verification examples and automatic verification reports.
• Automatic weld report.

Ansys 2020 R1

Weld Strength V201.14

• Graphic bug fix for Add Fillet/Butt weld creation.
• Bug fix for names in property list “Geometry select”.
• Bug fix for reading section forces with different format.
• Weld mesh option Linear/Quadratic elements. E.g. use quadratic together with Nonlinear weld material.
• Display Graph for path result along the weld section.
• Fillet/Butt Weld Strength Shell result for evaluation of shell models with cruciform joints. Multiple welds attached to one section edge can be evaluated at the same time.
• Fillet/Butt Weld Strength Child to plot different result items from a parent “Fillet/Butt Weld Strength”.

Weld Strength V201.12

• Add Butt Welds (V butt and Bevel butt).
• User defined Weld Material import/export.
• Option to include/exclude material non linearities in “Add Welds”.
• Group average calculation including effective weld length based on “Free end offset”.
• Debug feature to plot all weld node triads (works only in 2020R1 and up).
• New import/export file format based on “json”.
• Fillet/Butt Weld results in Random Vibration and Response Spectrum.
• Scale Factor on Fillet/Butt Weld result.

Weld Fatigue V201.9

• New load type: “Ratio”. (Same as Ansys Fatigue Tool).
• New result item: “Stress Utilization”, (inverse of “Stress Range Safety Factor”).
• New stress types in Nominal Method “Sum of Principal Stress” & “Stress Intensity”.
• New stress type in Linearized Method “Sum of Linearized Principal Stress”.
• Duplicate a “Linearized Method” creates a hidden link to the source linearized result even after resolving so result can be evaluated much faster.
• New Fatigue Child result to display different result items from a “parent” result.
• New mean stress method “ASME Elliptical”. (Same as Ansys Fatigue Tool).
• Mean stress correction available in Linearized Method.
• Bugfix: Cumulative results are evaluated after parent objects in the group.
• Bugfix: Output csv file name match object name in tree.

Weld Fatigue V201.7

• Import/Export of all or selected Weld Fatigue result objects.
• Bugfix for Hot Spot circular edge without vertex.

Ansys 2019 R2.4, R3

Weld Strength V192.11

• Full support for 2019 R2.4 and 2019 R3 (new GUI).
• Check for valid material name in case material has been renamed in Engineering Data.
• Create Weld contacts: Enough with “weld” in the name.
• Bugfix for Butt Weld floating and segment result where “Snormal” and “Tnormal” and thus “Seqv” was wrong. (The weld forces FX, FY and FZ was correct
• Bugfix for weld moment calculation for “Add fillet weld” in some cases.

Ansys R19.2, 2019 R1

Weld Strength V192.10

• Optimize bonded weld contacts to set asymmetric contact/target correct.
• Add weld improved to create a continuous weld across coincident edge vertices.
• Add weld custom aspect ratio and min/max weld angle for selected weld.
• Add weld number of throat elements from 1 to 4 for selected weld.
• Improved calculation of section orientation and graphics.
• Improved error handling and warning messages for missing results.
• Material grade properties can be defined in the preference file for user weld codes.
• Multiple evaluation sections in the weld can be defined in user weld codes.
• Weld bending moment and structural stress (normal + bending) result.
• Lamellar strength evaluation according to Eurocode 3.
• Multiple welds on shell model shared edge with different reference face can be evaluated.
• Weld section coordinate system can be plotted (for FX, FY and FZ force intensity).
• Consistent sign for component results independent of contact or shared geometry.
• Weld section APDL coordinate system can be plotted (used for “weld_*.lis” files).
• Segment average for result items and improved floating average.
• Files organized in subfolder “WeldStrength”. Options to control what files to write.
• Clear selected weld result temporary files.

Weld Fatigue V192.6

• Updated GUI for 2019R2.
• Create path through thickness at Linearized stress max.
• Linearized fatigue “Top” and “Bottom” face renamed to “Inside” and “Outside” (to be consistent with Mechanical and MAPDL).
• Linearized Normal Stress X/Y/Z and Shear Stress XY/YZ/XZ.
• Linearized Stress output parameters (Inside, Center, Outside).
• Bugfix for Hot Spot path coordinate in csv output file.

Weld Fatigue V192.5

• CSV Fatigue, calculate fatigue from imported CSV stress.
• Eurocode 3 S N Curves.
• Load case time selection is now a floating number instead of a list. This allows definition of results before the model is solved.
• Bugfix for stress calculation (range, min, avg and max) for “Load Scanning” and “Load Combination” for stress states that doesn’t change sign, e.g. an area with high pretension stress and minor variation.

Weld Fatigue V192.4

• Nominal Stress graphics for normal stress direction.
• Fatigue cutoff limit for each S N curve.
• Unit support for “ksi” in preference file.
• Stress range check for Nominal and Hot Spot method.
• Improved mid node results for solids.

Ansys R19.0, R19.1

These Ansys versions had major ACT performance issues and is not supported.

Ansys R18.2

Weld Strength V182.9

• Save and Load weld configuration to/from text file.
• All geometry types and mesh are supported.
• Thermal fillet welds to allow conduction and automatic mapping of temperatures in structural analysis.
• Post processing of fillet weld element results in Mechanical (Temperature, Deformation, Strain, Stress, Contact).
• Weld section “force sum” and “parallel moment” result items.
• Calculate Time History “No/Yes” to speed up weld evaluation.
• General speed improvement for weld evaluation.
• Calculate minimum weld thickness for “Add Fillet Weld”.
• Improved floating average result display for coarse shell models at section ends.
• New improved weld section and reference face graphics.
• Position of weld section for shell and solid models (Top/Bottom/Top&Bottom).
• Weld section angle is derived from geometry (and not fixed at 45 degrees).

Weld Fatigue V182.3

• Nominal method allows nodal selection in addition to edge and face selection.
• Nominal method has stress type selection; Principal (default), Equivalent and Normal (including coordinate system selection).
• Solution Combination (general load case combination).
• Hot Spot graphics to show extrapolation locations and reference face.
• Linearized graphics to show top and bottom geometry.
• Extrapolation direction can be flipped for “internal edges”.
• Mean Stress Correction according to Goodman, Soderberg and Gerber.
• Button to open preference file.

Ansys R18.0, R18.1

Weld Strength V180.8

• Weld contacts automation and optional contact mesh imprint automation.
• Solid fillet weld creation without the need of weld CAD geometry.
  • Welds parameters throat size, length, spacing/intermittent can be used for optimization.
  • Solid weld geometry and weld line geometry export for Space Claim and Design Modeler for external CAD and drawing preparation.
• Improved reference face logic; a planar flange as reference welded to a cylinder.
• Improved post processing of continuous weld and result export (csv).
• Weld codes; Eurocode 3 (4.5.3.2), Eurocode 3 Simplified (4.5.3.3) DNV Fatigue (2.3.5)

Weld Fatigue V180.2

• Linearized Stress Fatiguie method for solids.
• User defined S-N curves can be defined in the preference file.
• IIW S-N curves (Nominal, Hot Spot and Effective Notch).
• DNV GL S N curves

Ansys R17

Weld Strength V170.7

• Changing “Steel Grade” automatically sets the correct “Weld Strength”.
• Custom weld codes can be defined editing the preference file.
• New section in the end of the documentation: Using external post processing.

Weld Strength V170.6

• Weld result properties included in EDRMedeso Report Generator app
• Partial safety factor γ_M2 can be edited.
• Bug fixes for zero length edge and missing nodal forces.
• Bug fix to clear temp weld results after solve. No need to do “Clear Generated Data” before model is re-solved.
• Improved support for edge to edge and edge to surface contact.
• Post processing unit can be different than solution unit.

Weld Strength V170.5

• Fillet/Butt Weld Strength

Weld Fatigue V170.1

• Nominal Stress Method
• Hot-Spot Stress Method
• Effective Notch Stress Method
• Cumulative Damage