1. Set up Analysis Conditions (Apply material, add clamps, and apply force)
2. Perform Calculation
3. Display Calculated Analysis Results with Mesh (Deformation, Von Mises, Principal Stress, Displacement, etc.)
1. Set up Analysis Conditions
00:20
A material (Steel, in this video) has been applied to the solid, using the [Apply Material] command.
00:33
Right-click [Steel] in the spec tree to go to [Properties], and change the material attributes.
00:47
The workbench has been switched to GSA (Generative Structural Analysis), where analysis work (settings, calculation, display of results) will be performed.
00:52
The [Clamp] icon is clicked in order to specify the clamping areas. (The clamped areas have been shown with the red fork-like shapes. (Multiple faces can be selected.))
01:11
The [Distributed Force] command had been applied. This will specify the applying force to the geometry. 1 face has been selected, and at [1:26] the force has been specified. (-150N in the X axis direction, 0N in the Y and Z directions) The unit can be changed to Mpa (instead of N (Newton)) if necessary. The directions to apply forces, by the way, does not necessarily have to be in the X, Y, or Z direction.
01:43
[OCTREE Tetrahedron] is clicked in the spec tree. The window opens to let you modify the mesh information, including the mesh size, the sag (tesselation) value. - In solid geometries created in PartDesign workbench, meshes will be created automatically when you enter the GSA workbench. When working with surfaces (created in GSD), meshes need to be created manually in another workbench, called the [Advanced Meshing Tool] workbench. - In this video, surface meshing process is not introduced.
2. Perform Calculation
01:57
The [Compute] icon is clicked, in order to calculate the analysis with the settings that have been given.
3. Display Calculated Analysis Results
02:08
The [Deformation] icon is clicked to show the computed result with the mesh structure. Deformed shape is displayed in the 3D area.
02:13
The [Animate] icon is clicked to show the animated result. - Note this animation is not the movement based on the time. It only shows how the deformed geometry looks like when the displacement values are divided by the [Steps Number] that has been set by a user.
02:28
The [Von Mises] command is clicked, to dislay the result of the Von Mises stress analysis result. The color scale can be found at the right top in the 3D area when the [Von Mises] icon is clicked. - The more stressed, the more the area becomes closer to red.
03:09
The [Extrema] icon is clicked to show the maximum value in Von Mises representation. - This command detects the minimum and maximum values of both global extrema and local extrema.
03:42
The [Displacement] icon is clicked to show the analysis result by the displacement. Getting closer to the colored area, you will know the displacement values for nodes, represented by colored arrows. The farther the node has been displaced, the more close to red the arrow will be colored.
[Closing]
I currently don't work with FEA but back in Japan (although it was only a short period of time while I was preparing to move here) I was teaching FEA for the engineers in a CATIA class. - While teaching about it, I came to realize that many of the issues and questions on FEA would involve analysis setting issues, meshing problems, or computation error issues. - I would like to learn more about FEA, in order to have more opportunities in that field some day.
