SUMMARY

An Eulerian.nite element formulation for quasi-state one way coupled thermo-elasto-plastic systems is presented. The formulation is suitable for modeling material processes such as welding and laser surfacing. In an Eulerian frame, the solution.eld of a quasi-state process becomes steady state for the heat transfer problem and static for the stress problem. A mixed small deformation displacement elasto-plastic formulation is proposed. The formulation accounts for temperature dependent material proper-ties and exhibits a robust convergence. Streamline upwind Petrov–Galerkin (SUPG) is used to remove spurious oscillations. Smoothing functions are introduced to relax the non-di=erentiable evolution equations and allow for the use of gradient (sti=ness) solution scheme via the Newton–Raphson method. A 3-dimensional simulation of a laser surfacing process is presented to exemplify the formulation. Results from the Eulerian formulation are in good agreement with results from the conventional Lagrangian formulation. However, the Eulerian formulation is approximately 15 times faster than the Lagrangian. Copyright? 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd