Development of a Methodology for the Automated Spatial Mapping of Heterogeneous Elastoplastic Properties of Welded Joints

2026-03-13

AI Summary

This study addresses the limitations of conventional approaches in characterizing the elastoplastic mechanical behavior of heterogeneous materials such as welded joints, which often suffer from insufficient spatial resolution or low reliability. The authors propose an extended virtual fields method that enables high-resolution reconstruction of spatially varying constitutive parameters without requiring prior knowledge of their distribution. By integrating optical measurements, synthetic equivalent data, and numerical validation, the method is shown to be robust across diverse weld geometries, loading conditions, and dissimilar material combinations. Numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed approach accurately converges to the target parameter fields, achieving precise spatial mapping of heterogeneous mechanical properties and offering a novel pathway for the mechanical characterization of complex welded structures.

Technology Category

• Search and Optimization: Mixed Discrete/Continuous Search
• Machine Learning: Matrix & Tensor Methods
• Computer Vision: Low Level & Physics-based Vision

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Web performance, measurement, and characterization
• Web Mining and Content Analysis: Robustness and generalizability of Web mining methods
• Graph Algorithms and Modeling for the Web: Efficient manipulation of static and dynamic Web-related graphs

Abstract

Knowledge of the mechanical properties of materials is required for the design and analysis of engineering products, however, the characterisation of heterogeneous properties using traditional techniques is limited by spatial resolution or insufficient reliability. This paper presents a novel methodology for the characterisation of heterogeneous mechanical properties by extending the virtual fields method through the automated spatial parameterisation of constitutive parameters. Collaboration with the United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority provided this project with an application focus on the characterisation of the spatially-varying, elastoplastic mechanical properties of welded joints. The developed methodology enables the novel characterisation of welds with assorted geometries, varied loading configurations and dissimilar materials. Numerical verification of the developed method was performed using synthetic data equivalent to that obtained experimentally using optical measurements, where the kinematic fields are known and controlled. The results confirm that the proposed approach converges towards the target parameter maps without any a priori information on the distribution of the properties, successfully demonstrating the established methodology as a proof of concept.

Problem

• heterogeneous mechanical properties
• welded joints
• elastoplastic properties
• spatial mapping
• material characterization

Innovation

• Virtual Fields Method
• spatial parameterisation
• heterogeneous elastoplastic properties
• welded joints
• inverse identification