FE Primer 3 Tips for FEA analysis

Boundary Condition Tips

Removing rigid body motion

The equation {P} = [K] * {U} assumes that static equilibrium prevails. If the structure is not
restrained, this equation cannot be solved. The solver will report a singular stiffness matrix. To
make sure that the structure is adequately restrained you need to ensure that each axial translations
is restrained at least at one node in the structure. You also need to ensure that the structure cannot
rotate as a rigid body about any point. To prevent this you have to ensure that you restrain at least
3 points that do not lie in a straight line (you will need to restrain all three translations at these
points).

In NX MasterFEM or in NX Nastran you can use kinematic dof and inertia relief respectively to
get over this problem in bodies that cannot be restrained from exhibiting rigid body motion.

Soft Springs

Usually it is hard to adequately restrain a structure in some contact analyses where a structure has
to move almost as a rigid body and then come into contact with some other portion of the body. In
such cases you can use soft springs to prevent singularities in the structure. Use translational
springs to connect the structure to the ground. The stiffness of such springs should be about a
thousandth of the lowest stiffness of the structure.

Kinematic Degrees of Freedom and Inertia Relief can also be used to successfully solve an under-
constrained system.
Which Analysis do I choose?
Contact Analysis

Contact Use contact analyses only when contact regions cannot be predicted. Contact
analyses take a lot of time to converge. Restrict the contact analysis to one or two regions
where contact has to be investigated. For other regions, assume that contact has taken place and
apply restraints that will simulate the right behaviour. In a contact situation a compressive
force can be transmitted from one surface to another, however a tensile force cannot. As long
as a tensile force cannot be generated, it is okay to connect the two contacting surfaces with a
spring or a multi-point constraint equation.

Linear versus nonlinear

If the design areas of the material are expected to go into the plastic range, you have to use
non-linear analysis: e.g., crash, post-buckling, metal forming.

Static versus Dynamic

If one cycle of the force takes over 5 times the first natural period of the structure, you can
usually use static analysis.

Period of structure = 1/ frequency in cycles per second

Fatigue analysis

Parts subjected to repeated cycles of loads have to be checked for fatigue life or damage. A
fatigue analysis is usually done using static results. The static analysis computes stresses at
every node. The S-N curve is modified using the mean stress level and the stress amplitude at
each node in the model.

Number of Cycles of the Load

Fatigue Damage = ----------------------------------------------------
Number of Cycles to Failure on S-N Curve
How Good is my Model?
Element Quality
Element quality influences the quality of the analysis. The following discussion is based on I-deas
MasterFEM quality checks.

Distortion and stretch is what we usually focus on to check mesh quality. A distortion or stretch of
1.0 means that we have perfect elements. For tetrahedral elements the lowest that we tolerate is
0.05. For shell elements the tolerance levels are 0.2 or 0.3.
I-deas defines distortion as:

Stretch is defined as:

Model Check

Any analyst worth his salt will always check if all the loads have been applied correctly. The
easiest way to check this is to sum all of them and see if they add up to what you think that you
applied to the model. I-deas Model Check helps by computing the equivalent nodal load vector
and summing those results for you even before a full analysis is carried out.

Modal Check Sum

Pre-processing check of total applied

mechanical loads
Includes geometry based and FE
based loads. Note, geometry must be
meshed
Based on Model Solution Total
Applied Loads calculation
Output reported to List in global,
part, workplane, and local CS
(optional)

Have boundary conditions and properties been applied correctly?

I-deas has a number of good graphical tools that help you check this easily:

- The material property plot

helps check if these have been
applied correctly.

- Similar plots are available

for shell element thicknesses,
temperature loads, and
pressure loads.
Accuracy of Analysis

FEA is an approximate method. The answers are only as good as our modelling of the problem.
Assuming that we have used the right analysis and used the right elements for the job, the FEA
result is expected to converge to the right solution as we increase the number of elements. How do
we know if we have used the right number of elements?

One way to check accuracy is to look for stress jumps. Stresses are computed from deformations
by differentiating the deformations. This lowers the accuracy of the stress results.

20.5 21.2

20.9 19.9

The shaded node at the center of the figure has 4 elements connected to it. If we compute the
stresses at that node, each of the elements would provide a slightly different result as shown in the
picture above. These are called unaveraged results. Usually, we average them so that we can
have a nice clean contour plot without jumps. An unaveraged element plot of stresses reveals
stress jumps from one element to another. High stress jumps imply that we need to reduce element
size at that location.

Another way to check for accuracy of the analysis is to look at strain energy density. Strain energy
of each element was defined earlier as:

s.e. = * ({}T * {}) dV

which can also be computed as:

s.e. = * {u}T * [k] * {u}

If we divide this value by the volume of each element we get the strain energy density. By this
division we have normalized this value against the size of the element.

A plot of the strain energy density reveals inaccuracies in exactly the same way as the stress jumps
do. These plots are particularly useful in modal response analysis where there are no stresses to
compare.