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[Stef]

I'm trying to model weld distortion i have figured out the heat source but i cant figure out how to simulate adding filler material. from what i can read online some people use element birth death and then chop their weld up into smaller steps that get activated based on an time step seeing i want to model quite a few parts this would be a lot of work. So is there a way elements or nodes could be activated based on tempreature?  

[Sahil Sura]

Hi Stef,
Element Birth and Death is a robust tool to simulate these problems, you can have a very detailed control over your simulation giving you better results. This merit does come with a lot of pre-processing but ensures you get near to physical condition results. 
You can find more about the same here - Element Birth and Death (ansys.com)

You can also refer to the following video which demonstrates the Weld Distortion in Ansys Workbench Mechanical - Simplified Modeling of Weld Distortion in Ansys Workbench Mechanical

Another method can be the Direct Energy Deposition (DED) manufacturing process, the model evolves over time, meaning elements are added.
Which is similar to what you want to achieve, but with minimal pre-processing as compared to manually setting up the elements birth and death. The entire part is meshed first with Cartesian or Tetrahedron elements and then the standard element birth and death technique is used to activate element clusters to simulate the build progress.
A cluster is defined as a portion of the weld track. The build step is complete when all the element clusters have been activated (made "alive"). The analysis times and time stepping are also driven by the process parameters. These details are all handled internally during the solution

You can find more details on the same here -  Chapter 2: Implementation of DED in Mechanical (ansys.com)

Hope this helps!

Thanks,

Sahil

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