Continue to Site

Eng-Tips is the largest engineering community on the Internet

Intelligent Work Forums for Engineering Professionals

  • Congratulations cowski on being selected by the Eng-Tips community for having the most helpful posts in the forums last week. Way to Go!

springs as restraints?

Status
Not open for further replies.

bnrg

Mechanical
Mar 17, 2003
64
I have been reviewing some of the models in the book 'Building better products with FEA' by Adams and Askenazi and am having trouble with the boundary condition examples that they use with the link on page 295. The link is a tension member loaded by forces applied on 2 pins. In example '8.16a' they 'constrain' the mechanica model only with the applied loads and some springs. I am using WF3 and cannot find a way to get this to work as there are no applied constraints, the analysis won't even start without this. Can some one explain to me what I am missing? My understanding is that mechanica requires actual applied constraints-it does not consider balanced loads or springs to make a constrained model.
 
Replies continue below

Recommended for you

I would avoid running a model without any constraints. I am surprised such a book would recommend just holding it with springs . Just replace one of the force on your pins with a contraint in the same direction.

Principal - General FEA Consulting Services
 
A modal analysis is valid without constraints. You still need to removed the first 6 rigid body modes.

An inertia relief solution will also be valid when under constrained.

Perhaps the ends of the springs were to ground; this would effectively constrain the models.


Best regards,

Matthew Ian Loew



 
Status
Not open for further replies.

Part and Inventory Search

Sponsor