Basic Set-up: Disclaimer (If you know how to set up welds already, you can skip to simulations!)
A sketch of the structure can be made to provide a mould/shape of the final result, with the use of the Structural Member tool on Solidworks; you can transform sketch lines into differing-sized shapes & tubes
Some tips: While setting up, sketches make use of planes and 3D sketches to align joints to perfection, this will make the step mentioned above significantly easier to do.
Structural Member Breakdown:
Once sketches have been finalized and set up, you can proceed to create your members.
Standard, Type, and sizes can be selected from the menu.
Groups can be made through basic interactions with standard geometry (squares, triangles etc), or you could opt to have multiple stand-alone groups.
After this your corners (Joints) can be treated, to make it as aesthetic and clean-looking as possible, and to later help your sim.
A higher trim order may be necessary based on the number of objects intersecting at a corner. For the example set-up in the image 4 objects are intersecting at a corner, so the max trim order was used for all groups to refine the edge. Select the pink circle on your joins to apply the corner treatment.
SIMULATIONS OF WELDMENTS
To begin sims, you need to set up, Weld Beads, the actual joints for the different materials
The Weld Bead menu:
A Weld Path or Weld Geometry may be used to model the weld, that is needed.
Weld Geometry:
In this case, a face is selected and the intersecting tube is used as the second face, this is a basic setup for a welded joint. The welding symbol can also be defined, for both faces, it is recommended that a fillet is used, as it is an easier identifier for a weld.
Weld Path:
This is as easy as it sounds, you’re simply creating a path to indicate where the welds should be made. As long as you've set your default radius.
Once you’re done with this process and making the weld beads, simulations may begin
Also, all welds will be in the Weld Folder
By right-clicking on the weld folder you can hide and unhide the cosmetic weldments.
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The complexity of Joints: You can currently only make 3 types of joints on SolidWorks, Miter, EndButt, and Endbutt 2 this grossly limits the ability to represent more complex joints and non-standard conventions, which would require external detailing and sketching to achieve.
Limited Simulation:Overall simulation capabilities; the SolidWorks simulation capacity for advanced weldments is comparable to the underdeveloped muscular system of a little brother. The older brothers being ANSYS/Abaqus, SolidWorks fails when trying to simulate the behaviour of welded structures undergoing complex loads, this includes but is not limited to fatigue analysis, all of which would require software or manual calculations. [Stress]
Customization/Cutlist Issues: SolidWorks offers a variety of standard weldment profiles, and also a unique method of storing the customizations in the form of a cutlist. Management of this form of data storage is also quite challenging, and for unique and non-standard cross-sections, it becomes more challenging and complex.
Non-linear Analysis: The analysis of the behaviour of weldments under large deformations and non-linear material properties, FEA and simulations may be limited as well.
An example of this would be:
If we were analyzing a welded beam that was gradually undergoing increasing load, the point in which the load force surpasses the yield point of the material, plastic deformation occurs; significantly decreasing the stiffness of the material. SolidWorks FEA would not accurately model this behaviour, which would lead to the misestimation of stresses and incorrect deformation predictions.
This would be a situation in which ANSYS would be better.
ANSYS Simulations
Installing ANSYS: Visit Ansys Student Download
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In WorkBench → Drag Static Structural → (Make Changes to the structural property that you need) → Right Click geometry → (For Solidworks, .prt, .asm files are not acceptable, export your parts as .stl files.) → Then import and view your part on Space Claim. You can also visit (https://help.spaceclaim.com/2015.0.0/en/Content/Importing_and_exporting.htm ) to see acceptable file types.
We can now move to ANSYS Mechanical. Double-click Model in the Workbench interface to enter the workspace.
Creating A Mesh:
A mesh is made up of nodes in space that represent the shape of the geometry. Meshing turns our irregular shapes into smaller more recognizable volumes named “elements.”
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Once this has been selected you gain access to a customizable menu, titled Details of “Mesh,” based on your geometry you can define the scope of your weld.
P.S If you’re like me and a little clumsy with your mouse, if you close “details” or “outline” or any other toolbar recovery of them is easy.
Head over to Home, in your top navigation bar then manage
Click Manage then whatever you closed to re-open it!
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WELDS aren’t hard on ANSYS, MESH understanding is. Ref to More on WELDS.
Convergence/Auto-Meshing
Convergence requirement is a tool we can insert into our mesh analysis, this is only to be used when a stress/solution (deformation, strain, equiv stress etc.) is mesh-dependent in your analysis. To check for this, utilize the above mesh-refinement methods, and see if any of your solutions change significantly due to mesh alterations. If so, proceed with convergence.
Right-click solution factor → insert → convergence
What does convergence do?
Convergence changes your mesh/refines your mesh until your model reaches a less-than “?” allowable change value respective to the mesh-dependent solution.
If there is a less than 20% change in my calculated solution, from one iteration to the next, then it has converged and a solution has been found. If the value is too low, you may never converge, too high and you’re reverting your mesh refinement. (5% is my recommendation).
After defining your convergence conditions, navigate back to the solution and from here you can alter the maximum amount of refinement loops the amount of iterations you want convergence to run, and refinement depth similar to the Refinement tool mentioned before, the amount of subdivisions you wish to occur over the entirety of the mesh. After this process, your Mesh will be solved more finely.
THE STUDENT VERSION IS LIMITED TO 32, 000 nodes. A super-fine mesh is impossible with this version, but fun to try out.
Bolted Connections
The assumption when exploring Bolted Connections is that you've made holes for the allocated bolts, this can be done using the hole wizard on Solidworks
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