UNDERSTANDING CONNECTORS IN SIMULATION

The methods of joining components together is becoming quite simple among the designers during the design process. The component joining methods can either be a welding, bolting or adhesives etc. This job becomes more easy on the assembled components prioritizing the material specifications with its respective thickness & sizes.

In a cost effective way SolidWorks offers the designers to understand all these problems relating to weld sizing or the right choice of Bolts. The Users can make use of the default options for Pins, Bolts, Springs, Welds & other connectors for assemblies. In Simulation, working with connectors is much easy to understand its behavior in our designs.

The SolidWorks users can directly convert the smart components like Bolts & Nuts to Bolt connectors for analysis on assemblies. During the conversion process, the Head diameter, shank diameter & the pre-load conditions will automatically be taken into consideration. For the manual selection process in assigning the bolts, we can select the predefined edges or faces with the Bolt material to analyse for failures.

The Connector forces can be calculated for:

• Shear Force (N or Kgs)
• Axial Force (N or kgs)
• Bending moment (N.m or Kgf.m)
• Torque

Benefits:

• Calculating Bolt Failures
• Right sizing of Bolts & Welds
• Drastic time reduction for large assembly analysis
• Predicting the desired location for Bolts
• Cost & Time reduction by optimizing the connectors for product designs