Welded joint w/o complete penetration

Altair Forum User

Hello!

I'd like to analyze many welded joint without complete penetration. I've attached a simple example to show you what's the problem I'm dealing with. 

I want the two plates to be in contact through only the welded joints. At first, I tried to trim the solid with the grey surface in the first picture but, as you can see, altough I've used the trim-with-surface option, It cut the solid with a plane; cutting the welded joints too. 

Then I've tried to introduce through the CAD (second picture) a small gap (0.1mm)  between the plates before importing the geometry in hypermesh , it seems to work but I'm not sure about the reliability of this method.

Am I introducing a considerable error?

Is there a way to trim the solids with that surface only?

 

Thank you very much,

 

Luca

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tinh

Actually you don't need to set a gap 0.1mm, just make sure that the interface between 2 lap welds is not shared nodes

 

and I think you should set width of shared nodes area as 'd' > 'a' , because blue comp will be fused a bit while welding