Department of Mechanical Engineering ME EN 4000 - Engineering Design I Engineering Lab 9 Assigned: Thursday, November 2, 2006 Due: Wednesday, November 15, 2006, 5:00PM, to the ME4000 basket in 2110 MEB (turn in late homeworks to Dr. P’s office) Introduction This lab provides an introduction to the finite element analysis tools that are available in CAD packages such as ProE and SolidWorks. Finite element analysis can be a powerful tool for the design engineer, but using these tools without an understanding how they work and an awareness of the possible issues that may arise can be dangerous. In this lab, you will use FEA software to calculate beam deflections and stresses and decide whether these results are valid based on analytical solutions. Task You’ve been hired as a consultant by a local company to help them size a beam in the design of their hoist. The beam must be 3 meters long and support 500 Kg of mass and will be cantilevered off the side of their customer’s building. The deflection at the tip of the beam can not exceed 2 cm. You’ve also been asked to minimize the mass of the beam, to simplify installation, and the beam should be commercially available (look online or make some calls), to keep cost down. Your job is to come up with a beam design that satisfies all of these requirements. In the process of completing this you will need to: a) Complete a finite element analysis of your beam. - Calculate the vertical deflection of the beam. - Calculate the maximum beam stress. - Discuss difference in results that you see as a result of varying element size. b) Complete analytical calculations for comparison to your FEA results - Calculate the vertical end deflection of the beam. - Calculate the maximum beam stress. - Discuss any differences in results that you see between these analytical solutions and the FEA results. Do they agree? Which one do you believe? Name: Group Name: ID #:c) Suggest an alternative design that might reduce the mass of the hoist’s design (alternative to simply using a cantilevered beam). What to hand in • Final dimensions for your beam x-section. Make a sketch and put dimensions on it. • Final beam material (including alloy) and mass (remember this should be minimized). • Name the source/vendor that your company could buy this beam from. • Max stress, max deflection (at beam tip), yield stress of your material, and safety factor of your design. o Justify the safety factor of your design • A contour plot of the stresses in your beam (including max stress). • A contour plot of the deflections in your beam (including max deflection). • Your “hand calcs” for max beam stress and deflection (show formulas and max values for your design). • Discussion of results as suggested above. • Sketch of your alternative hoist structure design. • Please write down the amount of time it took you to complete this lab Hint • You may want to consider optimizing your beam design via excel or matlab before analyzing it via