FEA beginner, having troubles with meshing

[linkij]

I'm a first time user of FEA, using the LISA modeler program. I've made a beam roughly the shape of a bracket "[" rotated 90 degrees (for lack of a better term). The goal is to apply outward force on each end to cause a bend in the optic. I used various element extrusions and shape changes to make it (not very savvy with FEA). When I apply the forces and run it, the stresses only show up in the small quadrant of elements in that localized area of the part. I should be seeing stress throughout the beam, but I don't. I feel this is a problem with how I did the meshing, maybe the elements are not in union with one another? I need all the help I can get, so any tips would be great!

 

[JoshPlumSE]

It could also be an issue with the relative scale of the stresses.

If you can change the range of stresses plotted, you might find that you are getting stresses in the rest of the model. They're just so much lower than in those localized regions that they're hard to see

 

[DanStro]

Is the goal to see the increase in length of the beam?

Here are a couple of ideas.

Without seeing what is going on I would first think along the lines that JoshPlum is. That is that the force is very small and/or you beam is very stiff so the force is effectively not enough to cause a deformation. Did you look at the displacements to see if there is any outside of the nodes that you are applying the force?

Have you tried a finer mesh?
Have you made sure that you don't have any boundary conditions that would keep the beam from stretching (assuming that is the goal)?

 

[rb1957]

i'd pick an element away from the ends to see if it's stresses are zero.

the other thing i'd look at is the distance between the loads and the constraints (if they are on top of one another then the beam is doing nothing).