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

Overview of components that deserve to be analyzed with solid elements

As an analyst, you will be confronted with a wide range of simulation tasks, and the onus will be on you to decide on the most appropriate element as part of the finite element simulation workflow. Choosing the right element has an enormous impact on the accuracy of your simulations.

In the context of static analysis, the solid element remains one of the most flexible elements suitable for the analysis of various kinds of components. In the previous chapters, we mentioned some limitations of the truss/beam/shell elements when they were introduced. Although these elements allow us to use fewer elements in our simulations, they are all mathematical and mechanistic approximations of three-dimensional (3D) bodies. Therefore, in practice, a set of solid elements can be used whenever the structure you wish to analyze violates the limitations of structural elements such as beam/shell elements. For instance, anytime...