A REPORT ON THE FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF A 3D COMPONENT

COMPUTATIONAL ENGINEERING QUEEN MARY, UNIVERSITY OF LONDON JANUARY 2013

GAUTHAM VENUGOPALAN 120580859

Gautham Venugopalan 120580859

Introduction
According to Banks (1998) Simulation is the imitation of the operation of a real-world process or system over time. Simulation is the art of mimicking a real-world system as close as possible and then observing this mimicked world. These observations are analysed and then inferences are drawn from them as to how these systems would perform in the realworld. There are two approaches to simulation. The first one is the discrete problem method where a problem is divided into a finite number of well-defined components. In the other case, this division is carried out indefinitely leading to an infinite number of elements. Such a problem can only be defined using infinitesimal mathematical functions and is termed as a continuous system (Zienkiewicz et al., 2000). Simulation tools are available commercially and are used to solve a multitude of problems. Most of the simulation tools depend on Finite Element Method (FEM) to solve the desired problem. FEM is a numerical method of solving partial differential equations, which govern the characteristics of a system. In this method, each system is divided into small sections known as elements (Zienkiewicz et al., 2005). The properties of each element is found out and all element properties are then joined together to find out the overall property or behaviour of the system. FEM is an indispensable tool in the modern world and is used in almost all engineering applications ranging from design of a simple component such as a door handle to complex ones such as whole aircrafts.

For the purposes of this report, a generic hammer head, with a nail remover on one end, has been designed and simulated in a commercial FEM solver, ABAQUS. The hammer head is made out of steel and it is impacted against a flat wall to find out the deformation in the hammer head. To realise the simulation, certain sections (the hole into which the handle is inserted) were encastred in the hammer head and the pressure was applied to one of the ends of the hammer head. The figures below, figures 1 and 2 show a generic hammer head and the model respectively.

Figure 1: Real Hammer Head (Amar Forgings).

Figure 2: Abaqus Hammer Head Model.

Computational Engineering, January 2013

Gautham Venugopalan 120580859

Modelling
In this section, the discussion will be focussed on how the component was modelled and simulated. Also, a brief discussion will be provided on why certain modelling choices were made and the effect these choices had on the eventual simulation. The units that are used are Millimetres (mm) for length and Seconds (s) for time.

The hammer head is made out of a solid, deformable, 3D body and the side view of the hammer head is shown in figure 3.

Figure 1: Side View of the Hammer Head.

The hammer head, though a single entity, is made up of distinct sections. The first section, as can be seen in the left in the figure above, is the nail removing section. The second section forms the body of the hammer head and this is where the handle is attached. The third section is the neck of the hammer. This provides a bridge between the hammer head body and the impacting disc. The final section of the hammer is the impact disk, which is used to strike other objects. The top view of the hammer is shown in figure 4 below.

Figure 2: Top View of the Hammer Head.

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Gautham Venugopalan 120580859

The top view shows the hole of radius 7.5mm through which the handle of the hammer, normally made out of wood, is attached.

Material Properties
The hammer head was completely made out of steel. The material was assumed to behave elastically over the whole domain of stresses. The Youngs modulus and Poissons ratio which define the elastic characteristics of the material were inputted into Abaqus. The values that were assigned were: a Youngs modulus of 73E9 N/mm2 and a Poissons ratio of 0.3.

Meshing
After the material properties were assigned to the hammer head model, meshing was done. However, before a mesh was assigned, the hammer head was partitioned into logical cells so that meshing could be accomplished easily. Since the load being applied to the hammer head was being applied in only a single direction and as the deformations was to be low, the mesh was kept as a coarse mesh. This reduced the computation time without compromising much on the accuracy of the result values. The meshing was done with a global seed size of 1.6mm. The global seed size is the distance between two nodes in both the transverse and normal direction. Therefore the mesh grid that was generated was comprised of squares of 1.6mmx1.6mm in size. The meshed hammer head is shown in figure 5.

Figure 3: Meshed Hammer Head.

Computational Engineering, January 2013

Gautham Venugopalan 120580859

Applied Load
For the hammer head, it was assumed that the handle would not deform and hence the hole through which the handle would go through was encastred as shown in figure 6 below. Apart from the surface around the hole, the other regions were free to deform. The load, which was applied in terms of uniform pressure, was applied to the impact disc. It was assumed that the hammer was hit on the wall with a force of 300N. This meant that the pressure applied on the impact disc was equal to 789KPa as the frontal area of the impact disc is 3.8E-4 m2.

Figure 4: Encastre Conditions.

Another load case was analysed as well. All the parameters and conditions were kept the same however this time, the pressure was increased by a factor of 1000. Even though it is impossible for a human to generate such amounts of force, this case was simulated to visualise the deformation of the hammer head.

Results and Discussion

The stresses generated in both the cases is shown in figure 7

Figure 7: Stresses in the Hammer Head (Case 1 vs. Case 2).

Computational Engineering, January 2013

Gautham Venugopalan 120580859

From figure 7 it can be clearly seen that the maximum stresses in the hammer head can be found in the neck of the hammer. This is due to the fact that the hammer neck has the least cross sectional area and hence has a lot of load over a small area thus experiencing the maximum stress. The above figure also shows that the hammer shows negligible deformation in the first case, as is expected from experience. The second case on the other-hand shows considerable deformation, as was expected. It is interesting to note that in the second case, the neck compresses quite a bit while the impact disc compresses relatively less. Also, in both the cases it can be seen that there is a stress build up on the front edge of the handle hole. This is due to the fact that the surface of the hole resists motion and consequently stress builds up in that region. The stress along the neck in both the cases was plotted as well. These plots for case 1 and case 2 are shown in figures 8 and 9 respectively.

Figure 8: Stress along Neck-Case 1.

Figure 9: Stress along Neck-Case 2.

Computational Engineering, January 2013

Gautham Venugopalan 120580859

It can be seen from the plots that the stress values are highest at the ends of the neck where it attaches to the body on one end and the impact disk on the other. The plots of stresses follow similar profiles in both the cases. However, in the second case the stress is greater by a factor of about 1000. This is the factor by which the load pressure was increased by for the second case.

Conclusion
For the purposes of this report, a hammer head was simulated using the FEM software Abaqus. Two load cases on the hammer were analysed. The first load case was for the impact of the hammer on a wall when used by a human. In the second load case the load pressure was increased by a factor of 1000 in order to simulate deformation of the hammer. It was found that the global deformation and local stresses in the hammer head conformed to expectations in both the cases. Hence it can be concluded that simulation was successful in terms of accurately simulating the deformation of the hammer. It can also be concluded that FEM solvers are a very effective way of analysing a myriad of problems and with the rapid development of computing power, FEM solvers limitations are getting reduced and FEM will become an extremely potent tool in the near future.

Bibliography
Amar Forgings. (n.d.). Products. Retrieved January 2013, from Amar Forgings: http://www.amarforgings.com/page9.htm Banks, J. (1998). Handbook of Simulation - Principles, Methodology, Advances, Applications, and Practice. John Wiley & Sons. Zienkiewicz, O., & Taylor, R. (2000). Finite Element Method (5th Edition) Volume 1 - The Basis. Elsevier. Zienkiewicz, O., Taylor, R., & Zhu, J. (2005). Finite Element Method - Its Basis and Fundamentals (6th Edition). Elsevier.

Computational Engineering, January 2013