By Keith Pedersen on July 8, 2016
How best to simulate the dynamics response of a structure with a large number of screws or bolted connections? It is often prohibitively expensive to represent all the hardware, and at the highest level of fidelity, both in terms of set-up time, and also for the computational time. This article lays out a strategy for getting the best answer you can in the fewest compute iterations, then we delve into the tactics of accounting for the effect of each fastener.Goals
First, lay out clearly what your goals for the FEA are. If you need to predict the stresses and strains in the fasteners, or in the parts that are fastened, that is one thing. But if you are mostly concerned instead with the product’s displacement responses – that is, the natural mode shapes, the resonance frequencies, and the peak deflections – that is a different thing entirely. (…)
