Free Body Diagrams – Advanced Utilities to Ease the Process

01/13/2011

By

Jeff Wollschlager – Director, Modeling and Visualization
and
Paul Eder - Program Manager – HW API & GUI Toolkit

Detailed part analysis and optimization involves the creation of sub-models, or breakout models, extracted from global or internal loads models.  The creation of these sub-models can be difficult and time consuming using traditional methods.  Utilizing Free Body Diagram (FBD) concepts, one can simplify and streamline the understanding, creation and setup of breakout models.  FBDs allow the user to understand load paths and to create free body loads of interest for detailed models as boundary conditions (BCs) within a sub-modeling scheme.

FBDs also allow for equivalent force and moment results to be calculated on cross-sections for each loadstep.  From these results, Shear-Moment Plots (VMT) can be created for determining maximum equivalent loads.  These results can also be used to create Potato Plots for performing loadstep screening in advance of the detailed part analysis and optimization.

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Tags: aerospace, cross-section, extraction, FBD, force, force extraction, free body, free body diagram, HyperMesh, loadstep, moment, optimization, OptiStruct, RADIOSS, resultant force
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