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8 views

01 - Week - v1

Uploaded by

beykentmechanical3
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

FEA Analysis of a Chassis

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

In this week, we will explore a chassis frame structure made up of hollow tubes. The tubular
connections are triangulated to allow them to sustain loads in tension and compression. You
will learn how to prepare a chassis model in Ansys SpaceClaim. The process of extracting
beams from solids and connecting various beam members is demonstrated.

1 Introduction of ANSYS
Ansys Mechanical creates an integrated platform that uses finite element analysis (FEA) for
structural analysis. Mechanical is a dynamic environment that has a complete range of
analysis tools, from preparing geometry for analysis to connecting additional physics for
even greater fidelity. The intuitive and customizable user interface enables engineers of all
levels to get answers fast and with confidence. ANSYS Workbench is included with all
physics-based Ansys software bundles and automatically connects them, so your data
communicates seamlessly. The best way to access ANSYS Workbench is from the start
menu as displayed in .

1- Click Search bar 2-Type “Workbench” 3-Press Enter

Figure 1 How to start Workbench.


Here is the ANSYS Workbench application. We are seeing the project window the large
white space. On the right is project schematic. Over here on the left we have the toolbox a
collection of the various kinds of analyses that you can do. Under the student license you
can see a rich variety of kinds of analyses you could do as displayed in Figure 2.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

Project Window

Toolbox

Figure 2 ANSYS Workbench.


It enables many kinds of analyses. This makes this kind of analysis available to us.

2 Creating a new project


We can simply select and drop a static structural system on the project schematic window.

Figure 3 Static structural.


In the geometry tab with right click we can select the import geometry option and upload
the chasis geometry. Download the course files here to follow this course.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

1 – Right Click

2
3

Figure 4 How to import geometry.


Now we can choose the edit geometry and space claim option to make the required
changes for our analysis. Looking at the imported chasis we can see it is made up of multiple
solid members. These are loaded in space claim as solid objects with green icons in the
structure tree as displayed in Figure 5.

Figure 5 SpaceClaim.
We can simply select all the frame members by clicking the mouse button and holding the
while drawing a box around the frame to convert these solids to beams as displayed in
Figure 6.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

Figure 6 Selection of frame members.


We can go to the prepare tab and click on the extract tool as displayed in Figure 7. The
beam extract tool converts the existing 3D solids into beams with their extracted profile
based on the their cross-section. 1
2

Figure 7 The beam extract tool.


The solid members now appear as beam members as displayed in Figure 8.

Figure 8 Beam members.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

We can now select all the beam members and move them to a new component naming it
as chassis beams as displayed in Figure 9.

Figure 9 Chassis beams.


Moving them separate component allows us to modify members together which is most
helpful while working with large assemblies. In the current model we see at multiple
locations the extracted beams are disjointed or have developed gaps between adjacent
members. These arise at the positions where the slender solid members were connected
with sharp corners and could not be extracted by the tool to create multiple connections at
one go we can use the connect tool which automatically detects and connects beams to the
adjacent members based on the given maximum distance. Currently the tool marks
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locations having gaps between less than 10 mm as displayed in Figure 10.

Figure 10 Maximum distance.


By clicking on the green tick mark, we can simply connect all these adjoining members we
can then increase the minimum distance to 25 mm which prompts the tool to look for larger
gaps. At this distance there are some connections spotted which we do not wish to join as it

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

would change the chassis configuration. These pairs can thus be excluded from connecting
before performing the operation as displayed in Figure 11.

Figure 11 Connection operation.


As we complete the connect operation all the beams are now geometrically connected
without any existing gaps in the model. Each member has its own extracted profile based on
its solid geometry. Space claim allows us to modify these profiles and also create new ones
which can be added to all the members as displayed in Figure 12. This is most useful if we
1 on different design parameters.
would like to analyze the chassis performance based

Figure 12 Change cross-section profile.


We can simply select a profile and then click on edit beam profile to make changes based on
our design criteria as displayed in Figure 13.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

1
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Figure 13 Edit beam profile.


In this case as an example we given an outside radius of 16 mm an inner radius of 12.5 mm
to our profile as displayed in Figure 14.

Figure 14 Driving dimensions.


The tube profile created is automatically added to the beam profiles to assign this to our
geometry we simply box select all the members and click on the created profile the new
profile is attached to each member can now be seen as circular tube in the chassis beam
component as displayed in Figure 15.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

Figure 15 Circular tube.


To check the beam profiles in their orientation in 3D, we can click on the display button and
choose the solid beams option as displayed in Figure 16.

Figure 16 Display the beam profile.


This helps us to verify that the correct profiles are attached to the members. To view our
beams back as line elements, let’s click beams in the display tab as displayed in Figure 17.

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Department of Mechanical Engineering Advanced Vehicle Engineering – ANSYS

Figure 17 Display line elements.


Thus we have converted the 3D solid model to a beam model. In the next part of this
course, we will look at two methods of adding suspension arms to our chassis geometry.

3 Highlight
 Preparing the geometry in SpaceClaim
 Extracting Beams from solids.
 Connecting Beams members.
 Modifying and Assigning Beam Profiles.

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