LightHi:
It might be helpful if you provided a sketch with a plan view and sections showing the welds and the pieces being joined, along with dimensions and loads, etc. And, if you don’t have some vague idea how the welds work and the forces/stresses flow through them and into the pieces, I’m hard pressed to know how you will ever simulate this correctly, no matter what computer software you use to do your fundamental thinking for you. The computer and some software may help you with the magnitude of the stresses at different points, or a more accurate deformation picture, etc., but you have to model the structure correctly. It can not do this kind of basic thinking for you, no matter how much you are “concerned regarding the transfer of forces” or “i guess i should bond the faces.?” You have got to know the general picture and load transfer situation or how will you ever simulate it anywhere near correctly?
It sounds like you might have two pieces (plates) with a lap joint. The faces may be touching but they are not bonded, which would produce some sort of shear flow at the faying surface btwn. the two plates, in lbs./sq.inch of the contact surfaces, equal to the total force. The load transfer more likely happens through fillet welds on the edge of one plate and onto the face of the other plate. What is the orientation of the weld to the force, parallel to or perpendicular to it? How does this work on the welds? Can the plates deform in this load transfer process and adversely affect the weld or its root?
Why don’t you ask your boss how to do this problem, or how your exact detail works, so he knows what you know and what you don’t know, and so he can keep you and the company out of trouble. He has a vested interest in your doing things correctly, and might be a good mentor, as long as you haven’t oversold yourself. Do the problem both ways, edges bonded (fillet welds) or faces bonded (epoxy glue, many spot welds or some such), and study the output of the two different approaches with your boss and you both might learn something. He may not know SolidWorks as well as you should, but he probably understands the detail or structure better. Remember, a fancy software package does not an engineer make.
