Solidworks Sim - Intro

What is solid works simulation?

SOLIDWORKS Simulation provides core simulation tools to test your designs and make the decisions to improve quality. The full integration creates a short learning curve and eliminates the redundant tasks required with traditional analysis tools. Component materials, connections, and relationships defined during design development are fully understood for simulation. Products can be tested for strength and safety, and the kinematics fully analyzed. Further, a wide variety of geometry types are supported so you can simulate the real world performance of solid, thin-walled, and structural features.

-taken from solidworks website

The Process

To begin, I created a simple structure in solidworks. It is a simple 10cm X 10cm X 10cm cube hollowed out. each member is 1cm X 1cm square bar.

Next, to begin a simulation, go to the simulation tab, click the arrow under study adviser, and select new study. There will be a menu of studies you can take a look at. for this exercise select static study. This means that some reference on the object will remain fixed while an external force or torque is applied.

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At this point you created the study, so first we need to change the material. right click on the part and select apply/edit material. This will bring up the menu seen below. For the sake of this study select 4130 annealed steel, which is a potential material we may use for the chassis.

from here we need to define what will remain stationary during the test. to do this right click fixtures and select fixed geometry, and select the bottom plane. This means the bottom plane will not move, it is as if it is mated to the ground.

Now we need to apply a load, so right click external load and select force. Now that the left menu is open we can type what the magnitude of the force is in the text field with the units of Newtons. I chose 980 N, and selected the top face, so it is as if 100kg is balanced on my cube. Note that this is a uniform distributed load so the 100kg is evenly distributed on the face.

From here all we need to do is right click static 1 at the top of the study menu on the left, and select mesh and run. Meshing breaks up your part into many smaller components. Solidworks calculates the effect of the force on these parts, as opposed to the whole piece. This helps to be more accurate in how force at one half of the part affects the other. In general, the more mesh detail the more accurate the study, but the longer it will take to compute

Now we have the results. The colors on the object suggest where the stress concentrations are. Stress refer to the force relative to the cross sectional area. The closer the color to red, the greater the stress concentration is at that point. If the max stress is greater than the yield strength of your material, you will cause irreparable damage to your part, and redesign is necessary. For reference the yield strength of 4130 steel is 4.6 X 10^8 N/m^2 (pascals), and the max stress on my part is 1.87 X 10^7 pascals. The deformation of the object shows an estimation of how your object will bend, and it is not to scale by default.

Now what?

That is the most basic simulation in solidworks that you can do, and it would be beneficial to play around with different types of loads, different studies, and even try to optimize this shape to sustain a greater force than it already can, since it is rather poorly designed.