Book Image

Practical Finite Element Simulations with SOLIDWORKS 2022

By : Khameel B. Mustapha
Book Image

Practical Finite Element Simulations with SOLIDWORKS 2022

By: Khameel B. Mustapha

Overview of this book

SOLIDWORKS is a dominant computer-aided design (CAD) software for the 3D modeling, designing, and analysis of components. This book helps you get to grips with SOLIDWORKS Simulation, which is a remarkable and integral part of SOLIDWORKS predominantly deployed for advanced product performance assessment and virtual prototyping. With this book, you'll take a hands-on approach to learning SOLIDWORKS Simulation with the help of step-by-step guidelines on various aspects of the simulation workflow. You'll begin by learning about the requirements for effective simulation of parts and components, along with the idealization of physical components and their representation with finite element models. As you progress through the book, you'll find exercises at the end of each chapter, and you'll be able to download the geometry models used in all the chapters from GitHub. Finally, you’ll discover how to set up finite element simulations for the static analysis of components under various types of loads, and with different types of materials, from simple isotropic to composite, and different boundary conditions. By the end of this SOLIDWORKS 2022 book, you'll be able to conduct basic and advanced static analyses with SOLIDWORKS Simulation and have practical knowledge of how to best use the family of elements in the SOLIDWORKS Simulation library.
Table of Contents (15 chapters)
1
Section 1: An Introduction to SOLIDWORKS Simulation
6
Section 2: SOLIDWORKS Simulation with Shell and Solid Elements
10
Section 3: Advanced SOLIDWORKS Simulation with Complex Material and Loading Behavior

Chapter 10: A Guide to Meshing in SOLIDWORKS

Meshing is the process of discretizing a structure into smaller, finite substructures. As you will have observed from past chapters, a strong interplay exists between meshing and results obtained from finite element analysis. For this reason, we will use this chapter to complete our exploration of finite element simulation for static analysis by taking a careful look at ways to customize the meshing of a structure to achieve reliable results. You will encounter mesh control (again) and learn how to employ convergence analysis to evaluate the accuracy of simulation results. In pursuit of these ideas, the remainder of the chapter entails discussion centered around the following topics:

  • Discretization with beam and truss elements
  • Mesh control with plane elements
  • Mesh control with three-dimensional elements
  • Discretization with h- and p-elements