Dr Andrei Lozzi

Machine Design & CAD School of Aerospace Mechanical

MECH4460 & Mechatronic Engineering

Finite Element Exercise MECH4460

Handed out: 4 pm Thursday 9th March 2017

To be collected: 3 pm Thursday 30th March 2017

This assignment should take an average student 18 hours to complete to achieve a pass, which
requires just the application of relevant principles.

All students are required to submit a signed statement of compliance, with this Universitys policy on
plagiarism, with all work submitted for assessment.

Preliminary Tutorials. You may begin by reviewing a selection of FEA tutorials made available
online whenever the SolidWorks Simulation software is added in to a SW application. They are
accessible by selecting Help\SolidWorks, Simulation, Simulation tutorials. Examine the range of
topics covered by the tutorials to get an overview of what is available, in case you need to apply
some of their functions later. You are then to use Simulation to develop one or more of the designs
described here. In this assignment you can unleash your native ingenuity, but it is best to seek
understanding and begin with a plan. Some changes will make things worse, some better. It is as
important for you to understand what makes things worse as it is what makes things better. With a
little care you will be able, maybe in a seesaw fashion, to progressively improve your designs.

It may be necessary to add in Simulation, if it had not been used in your PC before. After SW is
running, start a new part, from the top menu select - Tools, add in, then Simulation. More advanced
tutorials and user manuals of SW and SWS in pdf format, may be copied from
www.aeromech.usyd.edu/units-of-study.php, then select MECH4460, course documents..

The Assignment

Problems. The files of the SW models referred to in these problems, shown on figure 1 to 4, are
also included in the above folder. You may assume that these models are adequately functional but
they need to have their stress distribution improved and for some their deflection reduced. You are
to select two or more of these and develop their detail designs along the lines prescribed.

What to submit. You are to submit a written report (ie on paper not by email) that shows and
describes how you progressed, from beginning to end, comparing design changes with
improvements or otherwise. Use objective aspects such as deflection, stress, mass, complexity or
other indicators that may be relevant. You really must try one geometric change at the time, if you
do not you will not know for sure what change has caused what effect. Keep your SW and SWS
files and studies in the event that we ask you to provide them to us, for examination.

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For each of the problems that you tackle your report must begin with a summary of your preferred
design. You must make clear what you have learned from your analysis and what is your best
design, do not leave that to the reader or marker, they may get it wrong.

Materials. All parts may be assumed to be made from a mid-range steel or aluminium alloy. For a
given load, the size, shape and Youngs modulus of a component will determine the deflection and
deformation within the component, which also means the strain and stress distribution within it. To
control deformation and or stress distribution we can modify size and shape, which is what we
aiming to do in these exercises.

Selecting alloys, within the steel or aluminium range, of higher or lower strength will not alter the
deformation, but to make the component safe, we need to select an alloy and heat treatment of a
strength, that will be sufficiently higher than the highest stress within the part. The SW files for all
the parts provided for analysis are contained in the folder made available to you.

Some General advice

Cross-sections. The shape and cross-sections of a part should reflect the sort of loads transmitted
through it. For example, where the bending moment is high, one can reduce the normal stresses on
the surfaces, by increasing the second moment of area (I) of the section. In a welded part, it is often
practical to increase I by adding webs. If torque is being transmitted then a high polar moment of
area is appropriate, that is a tubular cross section. Where compressive forces are the problem,
leading possibly to buckling, tubular cross section is also most effective. Tensile forces may be
dealt with just by simply increasing the cross sectional area that is subject to the tension.

Improvements in a design may be said to have taken place if the under and over-stressed areas are
reduced. For some, an ideal design is one where a part is completely uniformly stressed, that is
where the safety margin against failure is the same everywhere. We may strive for this condition,
but we may never quite achieve it in practice, except possibly in the simplest of cases.

The critical point to notice is that FEA does not reveal what is creating the stresses, and what are
appropriate ways to control them, you have to arrive at those conclusions yourself.

Deflections. A good design is also relatively stiff, that is it undergoes a relatively small amount of
deflection under load. Deflection often gets neglected, partly because it has less dramatic
consequences if it becomes excessive, causing just malfunction rather than catastrophic failure, and
partly because before FEA, deflection calculations are messier than their stress counterpart. You
may therefore be surprised by the magnitude of the deflections and distortions that occurs in
mechanical components, and the ingenuity that is required just to keep it all within acceptable
limits.

Stress concentration. There is a simple rule to follow to obtain improved uniformity of stress in a
component, add material where the stress is high and take it away where the stress is low! It is
really quite simple to say, but we quickly come up against the limits of our imagination at changing
and inventing shapes.

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Learn from others but do not copy them. In education and in the real world, the practice of
design includes examining other peoples work, understanding their ideas and how they are
executed, so that you may apply those ideas and at best, improve on them. While working in
industry, you must be careful not to actually copy competitors designs, as opposed to just learn
from them, or you may end up in court. For this class you can and should discuss and develop ideas
with others, but submit your own unique designs. Also, please note that there is no perfect design;
you can spend your life chasing just some ideal, only to have someone pointing out simple faults.
Hence my advice is not to spend too long on any one problem, move on to others then maybe
return to the troublesome problems, with fresh ideas.

Work on at least two of the following three problems:

Face A

Pad B

Pad C

Fig 1 tubular driveshaft and flange Fig 2 Outline of a rocker arm

Tubular shaft to perpendicular flange connection. The tubular drive shaft, Fig 1, is to have an
end designed that can bolt onto the vertical face of a coupling, with a number of evenly spaced
bolts on a PCD (Pitch Circle Diameter) of 110 mm. You are to design and analyse possible
transformations in shape between the tube and a flange. Initially you may take the flange and tube
to be one component, but later you may consider them as separate parts and the problems
associated with welding or bonding them into a rigid assembly. To apply FEA analysis you may fix
the bolt holes and apply torque to the far right end of the tubular shaft. The tube diameter, its wall
thickness and the PCD of the bolt holes on the flange, cannot be changed, all else can. Endeavour
to come up with a shape that exhibits a near uniform stress distribution.

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Rocker Arm. Shown above is a rocker arm to be machined from a block of Al alloy for a specialist
engine manufacturer. The shape and proportions of this sort of component can vary hugely between
manufacturers, as you can assess by using Google, or suitable references on engines. Maybe because
these components are small, some may conclude that it does not matter that some may be overweight
and have very uneven stress distribution. Yet their mass and inertia does affect how well the engine will
function at high revolutions. There is to be a 16 mm dia shaft to be installed perpendicularly to the face
A, with a clearance of about 0.05 mm all around the shaft and bearing face. A cam bears against contact
pad B, a valve stem bears against the pad C. The rocker arm is to have a mechanical advantage of
just 1. Sculpture this rectangular prism into an elegant shape, which reflects reasonably even stress
distribution, compare it to commercial rockers.

Splined shaft to hub connection. The figures below show a solid shaft, splined at one end and an
internally splined hub, into which the shaft can fit. You are to make an assembly and load it in
torsion, from the circular plain end of the shaft, to the outer cylindrical face the hub. You may vary
shapes and sizes in an endeavour to arrive at components that are as uniformly stressed as is
practical. That is, take away material where the stress is low, add it where it is high, while
producing a shape that is easy to manufacture. Details of the spline are provided separately. You
may change the diameters and shape of the shaft and hub, the length of the spline, but not the
diameters of the spline.

You are provided with an excerpt from the famous books of Orlov, which gives rare advice on how
a splined shaft connection can be made. Look also at some engineering and competition journals,
for advertisements of high performance splined shafts.

Fig 3 Splined shaft Fig 4 Splined hub