Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
(OP)
I'm wondering if there's an easy way to model some "liquid" in Pro/E.
For example, say I am modeling an airplane. Within the hull, there are a lot of nooks and crannies filled with some small assemblies. I'd like to be able to fill the body full of "fuel" so that it fills up all the empty space. Is there an easy way to do this?
Likewise, it'd be great if I could have the solid fuel model behave like a liquid in order to see how the pitch of the airplane and the sloshing of the fuel affects the CG of the airplane.
Is this at all possible? Does anyone know of any other sort of tool that I could use to accomplish this?
Thanks
For example, say I am modeling an airplane. Within the hull, there are a lot of nooks and crannies filled with some small assemblies. I'd like to be able to fill the body full of "fuel" so that it fills up all the empty space. Is there an easy way to do this?
Likewise, it'd be great if I could have the solid fuel model behave like a liquid in order to see how the pitch of the airplane and the sloshing of the fuel affects the CG of the airplane.
Is this at all possible? Does anyone know of any other sort of tool that I could use to accomplish this?
Thanks





RE: Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
To model the fuel as if it were solid you could make a quilt of the inner surfaces of the tank and use Create/Protrusion/Use quilt. If you wanted to be clever you could put in a planar surface to indicate the fill level of the tank and include this as the top surface of your quilt.
To do this, Create a new part and with no geometry (fuel.prt) and assemble into your airplane. Usee modify/mod part (pick fuel.prt)/feature/surface/new/copy. Pick the inside surfaces of the fuel tank.
Open fuel.prt and use quilt to create a solid.
I hope this makes sense, some of the menu picks may not be spot on though. I used to use this for pouring concrete around reinforcing bar so I know it works.
Hayden
RE: Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
RE: Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
Changing the angle of the cut allows you to model the fuel position as the plane tilts during take-off/flight. Defining a three point plane using points referenced from datum curves defined by angles relative to the horizontal is probably the easiest way to make a datum to use to locate the cut.
setting analysis features to modify this level to give a certain volume of fuel can also be done if that is something that would be useful as the volume of the part can be easily calculated by ProE.
Hope this helps.
RE: Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
Peglor, are you saying it's possible to set a feature that will automatically set the cut so that there's only a certain volume of my fuel model? If that's the case, that'd be most helpful... How can I go about doing that?
RE: Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
http://www.csn.ul.ie/~ceason/proeng/Wing_fuel_asm.jpg shows the datum curves with points at their ends used to define the fuel angle. The fuel level is made by creating a plane offset from the fuel angle plane from which a cut is extruded.
An analysis feature can be set up in the fuel part to measure the volume of the part. http://www.csn.ul.ie/~ceason/proeng/Analysis_feature.jpg Volumes of individual parts can't be calculated in assembly mode as far as I can see.
By creating the cut using a plane generated on the fly offset from the Fuel angle plane (You'll need a plane normal to this to use as a orientation reference for the sketcher) you now have a dimension which you can vary in a feasibility study which varies the depth of the cut http://www.csn.ul.ie/~ceason/proeng/Feasibility.jpg.
Hope this answers a few questions.
RE: Any Idea How to Model "liquid" in Pro/E to determine CG
Thanks so much for showing me that. I've never used the Optimization/Feasibility function before.
That's exactly what I need. This is going to help me do some mass properties studies. Now instead of guessing and interpolating values of the dimensions for the cuts, I can pretty much do it in no time!
Thanks for all the help!