MCEN90026 SOLID MECHANICS FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

JONATHAN MERRITT
2013

THE UNIVERSITY OF MELBOURNE

 TODAY'S LECTURE

Dierent levels of approximation in FEA

Monotonic convergence (beam demonstration)
Criteria for monotonic convergence
The Mysterious Case of the Innitely Sharp Corner
Limitations of linear FEA (Black Hawk Helicopter example)

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 LEVELS OF APPROXIMATION

01 Actual physical problem

Geometry
Material
Loading
Boundary conditions
02 Mathematical model / mechanical idealization
Kinematics
Three-dimensional
Kircho plate
Beam
Etc
Material
Loading
BCs
03 Finite element solution
Approximate solution to mathematical model

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 MONOTONIC CONVERGENCE

Under the correct conditions, FEA solutions will converge monotonically

to the exact solution of the problem-governing equations

(As just pointed out, the solution to the problem-governing equations is

not always identical to the solution of the real system)

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 ABAQUS BEAM EXAMPLE PARAMETERS

p = 0.2 N/mm

u 50 mm

2000 mm 50 mm

LOADING CROSS-SECTION

Cantilever beam loaded with a constant force

Measuring tip displacement u
Units: mm, N, MPa
Youngs modulus E = 200 GPa
Poissons ratio = 0.33
Exact solution (mathematical idealisation): u = (pL4 )/(8EI)
Using B21 beam elements

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 BEAM EXAMPLE OF MONOTONIC CONVERGENCE

3.8

4 FEA
Exact
Tip displacement (mm)

4.2

4.4

4.6

4.8

0 5 10 15 20 25 30 35
Number of elements

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 CRITERIA FOR MONOTONIC CONVERGENCE

01 Elements must be complete. They must be able to represent

All rigid body displacements
All constant strain states
02 Elements of the mesh must be compatible
No voids
No overlaps

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 RIGID BODY DISPLACEMENTS

The rigid body displacements of an element involve zero strain. For

example, for a plane stress element

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 CONSTANT STRAIN STATES

The element must also be able to represent all constant strain states

This can be understood by considering that, as the mesh becomes ner,

the variation in strain within each element becomes small compared with
the average strain that the element is experiencing

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 INFINITELY SHARP CORNER

Sometimes convergence is not possible because the governing equations

contain a singularity

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 INFINITELY SHARP CORNER PARAMETERS
10

30
von Mises stresses here

t=1 10

30

Units: (unspecied)
L-plate with an edge shear of t = 1
Youngs modulus E = 30000
Poissons ratio = 0.3
CPS4 elements with thickness z = 5
CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS
 VON MISES STRESSES AT THE SHARP CORNER

24

von Mises stress (MPa) 22

20

18

16

14

12

10
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8
Elements per edge

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 FILLETING THE CORNER

10

30 von Mises stresses here

t=1 10

30

Same geometry, but with r = 10 mm llet

Using both CPS4 and CPS8 elements

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 VON MISES STRESSES AT THE FILLETED CORNER

von Mises stress (MPa) 10

CPS4 Linear element

8 CPS8 Quadratic element

4
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14
Elements per edge

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 NON-LINEARITIES

Material
Non-linear elasticity
Plasticity
Etc
Contact
Elements may contact each other and introduce additional forces
Geometric
Bucking
Etc

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 CENTRIFUGAL STIFFENING OF A HELICOPTER ROTOR BLADE

Example: Sikorski Aircraft Corporation UH-60A Blackhawk

Used by the NASA Aeromechanics research group
http://rotorcraft.arc.nasa.gov
4 titanium spar rotor blades with bre-glass skins and Nomex
honeycomb core ller
Nominal aircraft weight: 7,500 kg

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 BLACK HAWK ROTOR BLADE CONSTRUCTION

Fibreglass cover

Titanium spar

Nomex core

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 SPAR MODEL

centrifugal load at 26 rad/s

lift load = 2.217 N/mm
t = 3.429 mm

u 45 mm

200 mm
8300 mm

LOADING CROSS-SECTION

Titanium spar (E = 115 GPa, = 0.33, = 4.65 g/cm3 )

Units: mm, N, MPa, T/mm3
Using B32 elements

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 ROTOR BLADE IN ABAQUS

Demonstration that geometric non-linearity is necessary for the lift and

centrifugal load eects on the blade to interact

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS

 END

Slides created using Free Other software used:

Software: Abaqus (commercial FEA)
LATEX typesetting system Code Aster (open source
Beamer slides FEA)
TikZ graphics language gmsh open source meshing
Inkscape Octave
QCAD Matlab
ImageMagick Python + SciPy +
Blender Matplotlib

CONVERGENCE AND LIMITATIONS