Modeling Structural Behaviour of Metallic Safety Components

This presentation was made at the NAFEMS Americas Seminar - Confidence in Engineering Simulation: The Next 10 Years of CAE in Mexico.

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Resource Abstract

Besides its value for the final validation or root cause analysis of designs, Finite Element Analysis (FEA) can offer critical information at early stages of development. This rationale has fostered the utilization of intuitive FEA modules, with limited capabilities, embedded in most of the market-leading parametric CAD tools.



Different to typical applications, where material yielding is used as the main failure criteria, the design of safety components comprises the need to control deformation beyond the elastic limit up to material failure. Thus, being able to predict the elastic-plastic behaviour of the structural components of interest may mean the difference between correct or out of order system performance. The previous requirement, in turn, demands for specialized FEA tools and closer to reality modelling procedures.



While metallic failure prediction is an ongoing research topic, this presentation reviews the effect of different modelling approaches, assumptions and simplifications used to estimate the resistance of a typical steel component under pull-test conditions. Design details, geometric variation, element types and formulations, boundary conditions as well as material model and properties were explored and their effects on load bearing quantified and compared. Considering the manufacturing effects, forming in this case, of the component was also explored.



After a briefly review of the current trends in Verification and Validation of FEA results, this report summarizes the procedure used to evaluate the influence of the afore-mentioned variables on the results. Data analysis allowed to identify the main effects from those parameters with low impact on the results. The final part of the document shares the lessons learned from this project and recommendations for future studies.