Welcome to FEA! FEA stands for Finite Element Analysis and is what the team uses to simulate the stresses your parts will experience in use.
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Title your page with the day you finished it! → Makes it easier to keep track of revisions
You’ll see a page for each week which will house all the FEA reports from that week. When you’ve finished up, I want you to change the status of the part you’re working on and highlight it green or red for pass or fail respectively. But do it for the cell background tho.
Make sure your Mesh is fine enough → make sure that each section has at least two nodes
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Don’t simulate off-the-shelf (OTS) parts → we choose parts that we know will withstand the loading, you won’t need to simulate them, makes everything more complicated
Add whatever file you used to your Confluence page (the SolidWorks file with the simulation and an Excel sheet with the mesh convergence data).
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The sections with an asterisk* are useful to know but should not be in the report. And the section with a tilda~ need to be included in your report if you have multiple parts in a single assembly you need to simulate. |
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Here’s where preload enters the picture. Preload compresses the parts that are bolted together, which means the bolt is in tension (remember that forces internal to a system net zero). Think of it as tightening a nut too much. This preload results in normal forces between the part and bolt. Therefore frictional forces are in effect and are what transfers forces acting radial to the bolt between the parts bolted together.
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Mesh
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Refinement~
In some cases it doesn’t make sense to decrease the size of the mesh of the entire part, since that would increase the running time of the simulation. But we can decrease the size of the mesh in specific areas, specifically where we expect higher stresses. That way we see the most realistic results in the areas we’re most concerned about, while keeping the simulation a reasonable running time.
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https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j-s3pUcyyxU
If you’re adding this into your report, just add some screenshots of where you’re adding the refinements.
Mesh Convergence
Run 5 simulation with progressively smaller meshmeshes. The idea is that has you decrease the size of the mesh the nodes will approach the size of atoms, basically resulting in the most accurate simulation possible.
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Right click on mesh, the left click on create mesh. The drop down mesh parameters and you’ll see the size of the mesh. |
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Jens Dekker add stuffWhen you have a finished simulation |
Results
Nothing too complicated here, just add some screenshots of the part in different views. I’m mainly looking for the stress, but if you feel there’s different results you want to show (like displacement). Feel free to add in those screenshots, but be sure to label them.
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