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So... what now?
April 22, 2009, 03:54 PM Jay TedeschiYou've completed a single point stress analysis, discovered several areas of high stress in your assembly, but how best to deal with them? There are a dizzying number of model parameters that could be changed, all of which will no doubt have an effect upon, but which one(s) would yield the best results?
Well, fortunately, Inventor Professional 2010's Stress Analysis environment has a tool to help you determine just that! The technique is sometimes referred to as Parametric Optimization, but in the SA environment it is called Parametric Dimension. Essentially, it allows you to select a group of sketch and model parameters that will be used to build part/assembly iterations, and each of these interations, and all of the resultant combinations, will be analyzed and then the results measured against a set of design constraints in a process that it sometimes referred to as a sensitivity study.
Stick with me here... in the example below, you see that after we run the single point analysis we find that we have several high stress areas. These stresses, while not significant enough to exceed the yield strength of the material, are nonethless a concern because ultimately they could lead to fatigue failure of one of the parts in the assembly. The highest stresses are concentrated in the tab, so we can try a few different thicknesses for the tab itself and also for it's stiffening rib. Three different values for the tab, and two for the rib give us a combination of 6 different versions that will be analyzed. To save time in processing there is an option for running what is called a "Smart set" of configurations. If you arranged the versions in a table, you would see that we have 3 columns and 2 rows, or vice versa, of interations... 4 total with regard to the 1st column and 1st row, and a total of 6 different combinations.
In our case, the "Smart set" analyzes those 4 versions, and because we are performing linear analysis, is able to interpolate the results for the other two. Once the analysis is complete, we open up the Parametric Table once again and are now able to evaluate our results against specific design criteria... in our case, Mass, Stress and Factor of Safety. Once a version is found which meets our design requirements, we promote the parameter changes back to the model, whcih then changes all of the assoicated parts/assemblies/drawings.
It is a very powerful addition to what was already a powerful analysis tool. Check it out and let me know what you think.
Comments
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April 24, 2009 09:56 AM Alex Hatziemmanuel
This was VERY impressive....please keep the videos coming Jay...I just subscribed to your YouTube site and have already sent links to my customers....Thanks
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