Mecanica FEA Setup

I am a student and new to running and setting up an FEA. What are the basic information items I need to setup a new material. Also, If I run an FEA on a heat treat part, what properties would I change to reflect this heat treat. Example, if I use sae 1050 material that is austempered, I know the yield strength is about 192kpsi and tensile 204kpsi. Does this affect the outcome?

Hello parb,

I'm not a Mechanica user but I can give you some general advise. A change to any material property WILL change the outcome to some degree unless of course you're using a "default" material and not changing it. However, it is possible that if the change is relatively close to the previous material properties, it is possible that any change may be too small to notice based on your DOF tolerance and mesh settings.

Let's wait and see if some Mechanica users resond with some definitive advice.

Also we have quite a few FEA meshing tips in our TechBits section and some tips, tutorials and books on Pro/E Mechanica for you to check out. See the links below:

3DCADTips FEA TechBits:
http://www.3dcadtips.com/go.php?topic=1&cat=30

Pro/E Mechanica Tips (18):
http://www.3dcadtips.com/go.php?topic=1&cat=598

Pro/E Mechanica Tutorials (8):
http://www.3dcadtips.com/go.php?topic=2&cat=1348

Pro/E Mechanica Books(18):
http://www.3dcadtips.com/go.php?topic=3&cat=1577

Good luck!
3DCADTips Help Desk

From our partner site MCADCentral.com


headrush
Posts: 3 Posted: 19 May 2006 at 2:30pm | IP Logged
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Mechanica does not need to know the strength of the material to perform an analysis, only modulus. You will evaluate the strength of the component after Mechanica completes the analysis.
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I hope this helps.
3DCADTips Help Desk

Here is more from our brothers over at MCADCentral.com. Excellent site Jason!

burnsp
Posts: 147 Posted: 19 May 2006 at 3:25pm | IP Logged
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As headrush says, you don't need any strength parameters in mechanica. It will calculate stress and dispalcement based upon the applied load and the modulus of the material. Simply stated, you'll then determine if the stress is too high based upon the FEA calcualted stresses and the actual material strengths. Be careful with any FEA program as it's fairly easy to get pretty pictures that are in reality useless b/c the constraints and/or loads don't represent the real world conditions.
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I hope this helps too.
3DCADTips Help Desk