Educate ourselves together, on the role of a Structural Performance Engineer

Structural Performance Engineer delivers industry-leading Abaqus technology through a guided user interface on the 3DEXPERIENCE platform, allowing design engineers to benefit from virtual testing for knowledgeable technical decision-making.

Introduction to the role

Product engineers may simulate structural linear & nonlinear static, frequency, buckling, modal dynamic response, and structural thermal behaviour of components and assemblies using Structural Performance Engineer on the cloud-based 3DEXPERIENCE platform.

            During the design phase, Structural Performance Engineer assists Design Engineers in examining the structural performance of products. Structural Performance Engineer gives the technical insights to the Professionals requires for meaningful design decisions through an easy & guided user interface.

Associated Apps

Material Definition: To create new materials & behaviors for design and simulation purposes.

 Structural Model Creation: Modeling environment for structural & thermal                                                                                          simulations including mesh, sections & connections.

Model Assembly Design: It encompasses the creation of finite element representations and                                                               assemblies of models for hierarchical assemblies, links management                                                            and import/export.

Structural Scenario Creation: To define simulation procedures and attributes for                                                                                      linear/nonlinear structural scenarios.

Physics Results Explorer: To explore results from physics simulation scenarios leveraging                                                              HPViz technology to efficiently load & display large complex models.

Collaborative Life-cycle: Provides advanced services for data life-cycle management.                                                                       (e.g. revisions)

Physics Methods Reuse: To access physics simulation experiences.

3DPlay Simulation Experience Enabler: To replay simulation experiences in 3DPlay.                                                                                               (web app)

Strong SOLIDWORKS integration

Structural Performance Engineer is readily accessible from SOLIDWORKS®, and you may move your geometry there with just one click. Because of the close interaction with SOLIDWORKS, even after modifications to the design, simulation and CAD models always stay in sync. With an easy-to-use interface, Structural Performance Engineer offers access to cutting-edge simulation technologies.

Transfer geometry and model features from SOLIDWORKS to Structural Performance Engineer with a single click to perform advanced simulation studies.

Simulation management and collaboration

The 3DEXPERIENCE platform manages simulation as a core value by capturing, managing, and re-using your simulation intellectual property, allowing it to become a genuine corporate asset.

For all users, the 3DEXPERIENCE platform simplifies and secures data and content administration. Engineers may readily identify data like as geometry, materials, and simulation models with the inbuilt 3D Search tool, increasing productivity. All project members, technical or non-technical, may access the same data from anywhere and on any device, improving collaboration and speeding up design choices based on simulation insights.

Cloud computing with high performance and results visualization

 Structural Performance Engineer gives you the option of running your simulations locally on your computer or remotely on the cloud for longer runs (requires credits). High-performance visualization tools enable efficient post-processing of large-scale simulation data, including the option of rendering and visualization computation on remote machines.

Structural Performance Engineer enables the rapid and clear interrogation of realistic simulation results for improved decision making. Extensive results visualization tools and controls can be used for advanced and collaborative post-processing while utilizing High Performance Computing (HPC) resources. The Simulation Review application provides web-based visualization of geometry and simulation results for a one-of-a-kind collaborative experience with simulation assets. 

Benefits

ü Product Engineers powerful and intuitive tools needed to perform sophisticated structural simulations during the design process.

ü Experience efficient what if scenarios through seamless associativity/integration with geometry.

ü Delivers unique engineering workflow with an access to robust simulation technology within an intuitive interface.

ü Offers multi-step structural scenarios for product performance and quality testing during the product design process.

ü Offers local and cloud compute with embedded compute up to 8 cores, removing hardware barriers for all.

ü Accelerate structural performance simulation with unique automated model creation for large assemblies.

ü Enables high performance results visualization, particularly for very large models.

Different Modes of Combination in Response Spectrum by SolidWorks Simulation

The response spectrum method is used to compute inertial response, estimates of response quantities developed for each mode, each direction of excitation and each input, if multiple inputs are considered. The total response is then formed by summing over all modal component, spatial component and excitation component responses. It estimate the structural response to short, nondeterministic, transient dynamic events. Examples of such events are earthquakes and shocks. Since the exact time history of the load is not known, it is difficult to perform a time-dependent analysis.

It is a widely used procedure for performing elastic dynamic seismic analysis, represents the set of the maximum acceleration, velocity or displacement responses of a family of single-degree-of-freedom (SDOF) damped oscillators. 

Fig: 1

For a given time period of system, maximum response is picked. This process is continued for all range of possible time periods of SDOF system. Final plot with system time period on x-axis and response quantity on y-axis is the required response spectra pertaining to specified damping ratio and input ground motion as acceleration, velocity or displacement response.

Factor Influencing Response Spectra:

1. Damping in the system

2. Time period of the system

3. Energy release mechanism

Errors in Evaluation of Response Spectrum:

Truncation Error: - In general, a truncation error exists in numerical methods for

integrating differential equations.

Rounding the Time Record: - For earthquake records digitized at irregular time intervals, the integration technique proposed in this report requires rounding of the time record and the attendant error depends on the way the rounding is done. For round-off to 0.005 sec, the average error in spectrum values is expected.

Error Due to Discretization: - In any numerical method of computing the spectra, the

response is obtained at a set of discrete points. Since spectral values represent

maximum values of response parameters which may not occur at these discrete points,

discretization introduces an error which gives spectrum values lower than the true

values.

Multi degree of freedom (MDOF) systems are usually analyzed using Modal Analysis. A

typical MDOF system with ‘n’ degree of freedom. The system when subjected to ground motion undergoes deformations in number of possible ways. These deformed shapes are known as modes of vibration or mode shapes.

In SolidWorks Simulation, we can predict the Displacement, Maximum Stress Induced and frequency with respective mode shapes of the system. with response as acceleration, velocity or displacement input to the system, with irrespective of the system type, the system can be 

Regular or Irregular as shown in Fig:2 & Fig:3.

  Fig:2(irregular Structure)

Fig:3(Regular) 

Regular Structure:

The design shall be approximately symmetrical in plan with respect to two orthogonal axis with flowing assumptions:

1. Location of joints with equal spacing in the design.

2. No horizontal or vertical irregularity of the structure

3. No change in material or shape of the structure cross section.

Irregular Structure:

If the design does not follow any assumptions of the regular system, becomes irregular structure. Most of the mechanical designs are Irregular in nature, as there may be material changes to the main members to improve the strength of the design.

There are different methods that are used for combining the response of each direction of system the methods for MDOF system are as follows:

1. Square root of sum of squares (SRSS) Method

2. Absolute Sum (ABSSUM) Method

3. Complete quadratic combination (CQC) Method

4. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL)

Square root of sum of squares (SRSS) Method:

The maximum response is obtained by square root of sum of square of response in each mode of vibration, the effect is calculated for each individual Frequency of the system with the defined response at different directions, these responses are summed up and an averaged.

Limitation of SRSS:

· There is a poor estimator of peak responses when applied to systems with closely spaced natural periods.

· Significant errors are caused when working with Irregular system.

Absolute Sum Method:

The peak responses of all the modes are added algebraically, assuming that all modal peaks occur at same time. The maximum response is given by:

Complete quadratic combination (CQC) Method:

The previously illustrated errors which are inherent in absolute sum or the SRSS method are rectified with CQC, The maximum response from all the modes is calculated as:

r_max is the maximum response

r_i, r_j are maximum responses in the i^th and j^th modes

α_ij is Cross Modal Coefficient

ξ is Modal  Damping Ratio, β is Frequency Ratio [ ]

Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) Method:

The Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) method to combine the peak responses from all mode shapes into overall displacements and stresses. It is modification of the SRSS Method, takes the absolute value of the response for the mode that exhibits the largest response and adds it to the SRSS response of the remaining modes the maximum response from all the modes is calculated as:

Where {u_j}_max represents the mode with the largest response among all modal responses.

All the above methods discussed are available in SolidWorks Simulation, according to the structure type and the user requirement, we can define the mode combination method as shown in the Fig: 4.

Fig: 4

We had discussed the different mode combination techniques in Response Spectrum, and the purpose of the different techniques and also the model equations of the techniques with their limitations.

THANK YOU FOR READING!

Thermal Stress Effect On Heat Treatment Baskets

Quenching is a process I which metal components are heated below the melting temperature and suddenly cooled in water, due to heating and sudden cooling the molecular structure will be changed, as the molecular structure changes there will be an increase in load with standing capacity etc.

Not only quenching, also process like heat treatment of components are done in industries which manufacture gears as shown in Fig: 1

 

Industries uses this process for strengthening the product, we uses different heat treatment basket for small components for batch process as shown in Fig: 2.

Different designs of baskets are used for different industry, when the components are heat treated then the baskets are also heated, upon repeated heating and cooling of the basket the life of the basket will decrease due to that there will be more scrap or rework on basket, which is an loss to the company, also there can be chance of shape change due to the internal thermal stress produced in the basket.

So to overcome these difficulties SolidWorks 2020, introduced a module Thermal Loads for Beams, where temperature can be given as an input to the beam or to joint, depending on the type of input like heat flux, heat power etc., can be defined accordingly to the beam or joints as in the Fig: 3.

We design a basket using weldments in Solidworks2020 as shown Fig: 4 with material properties are aluminum (1060 alloy) as shown in Fig: 5

Using these design and material properties, we had run an Thermal simulation, in the real life scenario the basket is kept in an heating chamber for heat treatment, so to provide the actual condition, radiation effect was given to the beam, the image shown in Fig: 6, displays how the radiation effect.

 Due to the thermal radiation there will be an internal stress produced inside the beam, these stress are called internal thermal stress, due to these there will be an expansion in the members. To check displacement value and location a static study was done with giving the base as fixed and providing thermal results as the input data, by running the study the displacement result is as shown Fig: 7.

 There are more internal stress produced at top corner as shown in Fig: 7 and the displacement is 4.54mm which is actually small, which indicates the members will not fail due to the thermal stress.

 By using SolidWorks 2020 we found the thermal internal stress produced on the beams, so that there will not be more rework on the basket to the company, as the elongation is small with in the temperature range, these can be found out in prier using SolidWorks Simulation.

THANK YOU FOR READING!