2d Simulation Solidworks

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Bradley Zweig

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Aug 3, 2024, 4:58:32 PM8/3/24

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SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional enables you to optimize your design, determine product mechanical resistance, ensure product durability, topology and natural frequencies, and test heat transfer and buckling instabilities. It can also perform sequential multi-physics simulations and high-cycle fatigue simulation.

SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium lets you efficiently evaluate your designs for nonlinear and dynamic response, dynamic loading, and composite materials. SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium includes three advanced studies: Non-Linear Static, Non-Linear Dynamic, and Linear Dynamics.

SOLIDWORKS Simulation is a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) program built into the familiar SOLIDWORKS CAD interface. Simulation provides designers and engineers the tools they need to quickly test their designs and intelligently iterate on them. Utilizing NAFEMS validated FEA solvers, SOLIDWORKS Simulation can provide accurate, reliable results for a wide range of study types from basic linear static analysis to more complex nonlinear and dynamic analysis. Speed up the iteration and prototyping phase of your design process with SOLIDWORKS Simulation.

A ccuracy and reliability is a common question of all Simulation tools. How do we know the results can be trusted? Fortunately, there is an independent group that handles this. The National Agency for Finite Element Methods and Standards (NAFEMS) tests simulation programs against benchmark studies with known results that have been validated mathematically and empirically. All study types available in SOLIDWORKS Simulation have been tested and validated by NAFEMS.

Test designs using linear materials under steady-state load conditions to quickly analyze and iterate designs based on stress, strain, displacement, and Factor of Safety (FOS) results. The included Trend Tracker tool helps engineers to track the results of design changes automatically.

Leverages user-defined constraints (mates) in assemblies and mechanical inputs (gravity, springs, dampers, forces, etc.) to accurately recreate the mechanical movement of the assembly and provide designers with reaction forces, position, acceleration, and velocities.

Used to test the life of designs due to fatigue failure, engineers can apply multiple load scenarios including varying and cyclic loads where peak stress is below material yield to understand the expected life-span of their designs.

Also known as modal analysis, this test is used to determine both the modal shape and natural frequencies of both parts and assemblies. This is critical information for an Engineer to have when creating designs that will be subjected to vibration inputs or used in vibrating environments.

This test gives engineers a method to study and understand the heat transfer, both steady-state and transient, through conduction between components as well as both radiation and convection into the surrounding environment. The results of this analysis can be used in a stress analysis to see how the thermal conditions will affect the stress and displacement in a part or assembly.

Allows designers to rapidly test and optimize a design based on variables such as dimensions, and materials with given constraints and overall goals such as weight, strength, frequency, and even manufacturing cost.

Provides an easy to use tool for simulating drop test impacts of components and assemblies. Drop test analysis gives full control on the impact surface, height, velocity, and angle of the drop to understand how a design will behave when subjected to a drop impact.

Rubbers, plastics, Nitinol, and other nonlinear materials cannot be accurately tested with a linear solver. Nonlinear analysis allows engineers to use advanced material models to accurately analyze designs that incorporate these materials.

Used when designing with materials such as fiberglass or carbon fiber, this study allows engineers to specify fiber orientation and layup schedule for their designs. The results provide information on stresses at each layer as well as interlaminar stresses and composite specific results like Tsai Hill and Tsai Wu.

Allows designers to test Modal Time History, Harmonic Analysis, Random Vibration, and Response Spectrum of components and assemblies. Results such as transient response, peak response, stress, acceleration, and displacement can be provided by this type of analysis.

GoEngineer's extensive SOLIDWORKS technical knowledge and world class support can help you succeed with SOLIDWORKS. Our award-winning team is ready to help you with any task you may have. Using state-of-art remote assistant technology software allows our team to solve most issues within one session. Reach out and see why GoEngineer is the #1 reseller of SOLIDWORKS and Stratasys systems in the world!

GoEngineer offers online and classroom professional SOLIDWORKS training for organizations and individuals. All our instructors are SOLIDWORKS certified and teach thousands of students each year world wide. The curriculum is very diverse with numerous certified SOLIDWORKS courses to choose from. Each student will receive a Course Completion Certificate and preparation materials for SOLIDWORKS certification.

While taking a well earned rest (and having a nice cup of tea) it hit me. Ten years ago, during my first simulation class using COSMOS (which became SolidWorks Simulation), I had done an analysis of snow on a corrugated iron roof! With the roof cleared it was time to dig out my old notes. Being an engineer pack rat nothing is thrown away, and I was curious to see how much weight I had shifted off my roof.

Looking at the stress result I can see that I have a safety factor of 4, which is a ratio of the maximum stress in the roof to the materials strength. But to me that seems a bit low. To improve the safety factor, I'll add more roof trusses.

My factor of safety is now 6, which makes me feel better, but looking at the roof deflections, I see that some of the trusses are deflecting over 100mm (4 inches). That doesn't exactly inspire confidence in a roof.

This is one of the most common questions we get from customers, and the answer is entirely dependent on your current and future needs. The following diagram shows which modules are available with the three packages:

SOLIDWORKS Simulation Standard and Professional both contain the essential linear-static analysis capabilities, allowing you to easily perform and iterate your design validation. The two primary differences between simulation Standard and Professional is the addition of numerous study types and efficiency tools that are included with SOLIDWORKS Simulation Professional. These additions will help you to better predict failure due to many common failure modes, and will streamline the process of analyzing larger or more complex problems.

In addition to all the capabilities of the Standard and Professional simulation packages, SOLIDWORKS Simulation Premium will enable you to solve nonlinear and/or dynamic problems. These analysis types allow you to better represent the materials and conditions of your design, and make it possible to consider the many conditions your products will be subjected to during their life-cycle.

If you recently purchased SOLIDWORKS Simulation or if you are setting up a new computer with SOLIDWORKS Simulation, having the default options and preferred Plot settings can help create a more automated workflow for your analysis. This article will go over some of the most common options that users can configure. Please note that changing these options will only change the options in new simulation studies created and will not overwrite options in existing studies.

If you find yourself routinely changing anything about your plots to make them easier to read, return to these Simulation options to make changes that will be applied to all new studies. If you have additional questions, please contact us for more information!

I'm running a solidworks drop test simulation and I'm having some trouble making sense of the results. The idea is basically a hollow shell made of aluminum that will impact the ground at 5 m/s. It is carrying some weight inside which I was unsure how to model so I just created a custom material and said that it has the exact same properties as AL 6061 but has a higher density which makes the mass come out to the real world mass of the shell+internal mass. This alone might be causing some issues but I don't know how else to say that the shell is carrying a mass (I thought of perhaps increasing gravity, but that seems even more roundabout).

My main concern has to do with the displacement, below you can see that the heavy shell has impacted the ground and stresses are propagating upward in a wave, the scale on the side shows that the max stress was 273 MPa, and that the yield is 275 MPa.

Solidworks shows this large displacement (Which I made sure is on a true 1:1 scale and not exagerated). It corresponds to 3.5mm, but if you look closely the displacement will actually be double this. I noticed this by superimposing the undeformed model in the white silouhette. As shown, the whole part was moved a certain amount,downward, and the nose was dented upward, solidworks is subtracting the difference but in reality the nose is twice as far away from it's original position. Basically, besides the curent 3.5mm, you also have to account for moving the whole model down so that the bottom noses correspond to one another, meaning the displacement will be almost a centimeter.

My confusion stems from the fact that this all looks like far too much displacement for the deformation to be plastic, but as I mentioned before, we have not exceeded the yield point, so it should theoretically all spring back into place after the impact. Should I trust that since the YP stress wasn't reached the shell will come out intact?

You describe the body as a shell; your model looks like an axi-symmetric model might be appropriate. The number of elements through the thickness is key here. You need at least two to pick up bending behavior properly; more elements or higher order elements will be better. Bending usually means a linear strain distribution through the thickness. If you don't have enough linear elements, or aren't using higher order elements, you won't pick it up correctly.