Simulation software allows designers, production planners, and manufacturing practitioners to quickly understand, control, and minimize distortion coming from welding fabrication.

ESI Group announces PAM-ASSEMBLY as part of its suite of simulation software for various industries. Validated for more than five years by many industrial partners, this program allows designers, production planners, and manufacturing practitioners to quickly understand, control, and minimize distortion coming from welding fabrication. PAM-ASSEMBLY software helps to find the best possible welding fabrication solution from the design stage to the manufacturing stage of the product.

A wide range of users can use it because this software is based on an intuitive workflow and does not require an advanced knowledge of finite element analysis (FEA).

PAM-ASSEMBLY offers a simple five-step methodology.

The welding process is simulated on a 'local' model, where comprehensive welding physics are manipulated to evaluate internal forces generated by the welding joint, which are stored in a local model database.

This simplifies welding physics simulation.

The first step in modeling a welding assembly is to access the local model database to choose the weld joint configuration.

The next step focuses on the generation of the 'global' model, based on the different components to be assembled.

After defining the welding sequence and clamping conditions, the distortion due to the welding-assembly process is computed.

The last step consists of a fast and accurate analysis, allowing the optimization of the welding distortion due to the fabrication process.

'A very good agreement has been achieved between measurements and simulations, using the local-global approach from PAM-ASSEMBLY,' said Marek Slovacek, PhD, head of the Technology Processes Department at the Institute of the Applied Mechanics Brno, in Brno, Czech Republic.

'PAM-ASSEMBLY's technology,' added Harald Porzner, manager of the Welding Simulation Solution of ESI Group, 'Provides innovation and precision in advanced manufacturing simulation without simplification of the physics of welding, while remaining user-friendly and efficient with respect to computation time, even for large assemblies.' PAM-ASSEMBLY is a part of the Welding Simulation Solution provided by ESI Group.

The user environment is available on Windows platforms and the computation can be run on major Windows, Linux, and Unix platforms.

ESI Group's Welding Simulation Solution is a tool which can be used to provide solutions to the everyday issues that face designers, process planners and manufacturing practitioners.

It can be used at any stage of the product and process development process.

It incorporates SYSWELD - the simulation tool used to simulate the welding physics for the local model - and PAM-ASSEMBLY - the simulation tool to perform distortion engineering on large and complex structures in the shortest time possible.

The Welding Simulation Solution facilitates the assessment, control, and optimization of distortion and residual stresses due to the welding fabrication process.

The Welding Simulation Solution includes single pass welding, multi-pass welding, spot welding, friction welding, and friction stir welding.

The heat effects of arbitrary welding processes can be predicted, allowing distortion engineering and residual stress control.

The Welding Simulation Solution is being applied successfully in the automotive industry, heavy industry, the energy and nuclear industry and the shipbuilding industry.

A significant simulation engineering knowledge base is provided with the software and extensive in-depth training courses are available on all aspects of welding simulation engineering.

* About ESI Group - ESI Group is a world-leading supplier, and a pioneer of digital simulation software for prototyping and manufacturing processes that take into account the physics of materials.

ESI Group has developed an extensive suite of coherent, industry oriented applications to realistically simulate a product's behavior during testing, to fine-tune manufacturing processes in accordance with desired product performance, and evaluate the environment's impact on product performance.

ESI Group's products, which have a proven track record in manufacturing and have been combined in multi-trade value chains, represent a unique collaborative and open virtual engineering solution known as the Virtual Try-Out Space (VTOS), enabling virtual prototypes to be improved in a continuous and collaborative manner.

This integrated protocol allows all the company's solutions to work with each other and with applications developed by independent software vendors.

By significantly reducing costs and development lead times and enabling product/process synergies, VTOS solutions offer major competitive advantage by progressively eliminating the need for physical prototypes during product development.

The company generated sales of EUR 62.2 million in 2005, employs over 500 high-level specialists worldwide covering more than 30 countries.