Monocoque Sandwich Material Anlaysis

[mmramadan]

Hi There ,
It's the first time for me to make a monocoque chassis and i am struggling with the stress analysis phase after making the hand calculations for the sandwich material . I've tried to use Shell 99 and shell 181 in ANSYS but results seems to have some faults , so please can anyone suggest FEA software that is best for prediction of the monocoque stress analysis ?
Thanks in Advance

[Claude Rouelle]

No worth to introduce yourself?

[ffrgtm]

For predicting characteristics of planar sandwich panels subject to straightforward boundary conditions we've had success with ESAcomp. These simulations really lend themselves to situations where you plan to validate with physical tests that are also valid for use in the SES. This has been the most efficient way for us to check out hand-calculations.

If you'd like to predict global characteristics of a sandwich structure with complex geometry (monocoque) then you're not at a disadvantage using Ansys. We use Altair Hyperworks for this, but picking up this textbook http://www.amazon.com/Element-Analysis-Composite-Materials-Edition/dp/1466516895 helped us when we were first starting out.

I'd recommend against using FEA to predict through-the-thickness effects at places where you're introducing loads into the composite structure. It seems that any chance of accuracy requires several elements in the 3-direction per ply. A mesh this expensive wasn't practical in our situation. Experiment with physical testing of different insert arrangements instead.


-Ben Kroon
SDSMT FSAE