Instructions MT5081-01B FEM with SIMULATION

1. Go back to the part (pick Model at the bottom of the screen) and make a hole (really a quarter of a hole) with the diameter 20 and the center in the origin. Return to Study1 at the bottom. You have now a warning sign on Mesh, because the model has been changed. Right click on Mesh and chose Apply Mesh Control. Pick the surface of the hole and set element size to 2 mm. OK. Right click on Control-1 and chose Hide. 2. Right click again on Mesh and chose Create Mesh. Accept that old results will be deleted and use 4 mm for a new mesh. You can see that the elements now are smaller around the hole where we set the controls. Right click on Study1 and Run. 3. Look at Stress1 when the calculations are finished. If Error norm is not chosen, use Edit Definition to change to ERR. I get a value of 6 % in the hole, just where the most interesting stresses will be. Thats a problem. So change Control-1 under Mesh using Edit Definition and set the size to 1 mm. Remesh and Run. Then look at Stress1 again, youll see that the Error norm has gone down to 2 %. Also the maximum for the error norm has moved to a place with lower stresses. This will have to do. 4. Use Edit Definition on Stress1 again and change ERR to SX, N/m^2 to N/mm^2 and change back to Node Values. OK. We can now see that the maximum stress in the x direction has increased from 50 to 192 MPa with a sharp concentration on the side of the hole. In front of the hole the stress is -7 MPa, which means a pressure. If we compare the maximum stress with the yield limit, we get 220/192 = 1,15 which is a very low value for the safety factor.

5. Look at SZ. Here we get a pressure of 75 MPa in front of the hole. SY, TXY och TYZ are small, but TXZ varies from +15 to -51 MPa along the hole perimeter. This is a shear stress. It deforms the elements more or less in the same way, as when you deform a square into a rhomb.

6. How will we know if the bar will hold or not? Well, we use the Von Mises equivalent stress, which is a combination of the different types of stresses. Plot VON and you will see that the equivalent stress is a little bit smaller than SX, so our safety factor increase to 1,17. Still too low. 7. If you look at Displacement1, UX, you will see that this has a small increase due to the hole, but the change of the width (UZ) is much bigger. Knowing the material properties E=210 000 MPa and n=0,28 it was easy to calculate UX and UZ for the flat bar without hole, but with the hole it is much more difficult. That the Finite Element Method works well even with complicated geometries, explains why it is so widely used today. 8. The stress concentration factor (K) can be calculated if we plot the stress P1 (P1 always give the highest pulling stress (positive), P3 the highest pressure (negative)). This has the same value as SX, 191,9 MPa. This should be compared to the expected stress if there were no concentration. Using Measure (on the Evaluate tab) we see that the cross section area is 60 mm2. This gives the expected stress F/A = 5000/60 = 83,3 N/mm2, so the concentration factor is K=191,9/83,3 = 2,3 For small holes this factor is close to 3.

9. Now we will look at the safety factor. Right click on Results and chose Define Factor of Safety Plot. Here you can compare the von Mises stress with the yield limit for the material. Use Next (the blue arrow above). Use Next again. Check Area below factor of safety and write 2 in the next box. OK. Now you will get a picture showing where the safety factor is below 2. As you can see there is only a small area on the side of the hole that has a value below 2. One might think about making some reinforcement here, but we will not do so for now .

10. In stead we will look at what happens if we change the hole diameter. We will do this by using the diameter as a parameter and define a so called. Design Scenario. First we will see how to make changes in the menus. This can be very useful to know. 11. With the Simulation tab chosen above, right click in an empty space of the menu. Chose Customize almost at the bottom. In the window that appears take the tab Commands and mark Simulation. At the right you see all the buttons (icons) for the simulation commands. Pull the icons for Parameters, Design Scenario, Run Design Scenario and Define Graph up to the Simulation menu. OK.

12. Now use the command Parameters and Add in the lower left corner of the window. Set the name to Diameter, chose Filter: Model dimensions. Pick the Model tab at the bottom of the screen and then the hole so you can see the dimensions. Pick the diameter dimension 20 and it will enter into the shadowed areas. OK. OK. 13. Then use the command Design Scenario. Change No of scenarios to 5. Update. Mark Diameter at the left and set the values for Set1 to Set5 to 4, 8, 12, 16 and 20 mm. OK. Then use the command Run Design Scenario.

14. Now the program will start the meshing and running of the five different models. This might take a while. When the calculations are finished, you can find under Results Graph1. Right click on this and chose Edit Definition. Change to By Parameter and N/mm2. Chose the von Mises stress. OK. You will now get a graph, that shows how the maximum von Mises stress changes with the hole diameter. The smaller the diameter, the lower the stress. But observe that the stress is not decreasing as rapidly as one might expect. With the diameter 4 mm the stress is still almost three times higher than the 50 MPa we had without the hole. But now the safety factor is 1,5 which in many cases is acceptable. A smaller hole gives a bigger cross section area. This lowers the stress on the sides of the hole, but at the same time the stress concentration will increase. So the dependence of the stress on the hole diameter is very complicated. Define a new Design Scenario with the diameters 6, 8, 10, 12 and 14, and you will see.