Specifications

CT Corsair Final Report May 2, 2014
34
Since the pin was omitted from the analysis, the bearing stress was assumed to distribute
uniformly over the bearing hole. As a result, during the FEA the load was applied to half of the
bearing hole as shown in Figure 37. This caused deformation only to occur on the z-axis and
created an accurate output stress concentration in the bearing holes.
Meshing and Mesh Convergence
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ABAQUS requires the user to mesh the part based on the number of seeds along each edge.
Meshing the member was simplified due to the symmetry in the part, therefore ordinary meshes
could be used for the FEA. The mesh convergence was critical in this analysis because
depending on the mesh density size an incorrect maximum stress can be evaluated. This
phenomenon is shown in Figure 38 and Figure 39. To test mesh density, a mesh convergence test
was performed to compare the amount of elements in the mesh to the maximum stress output.
The mesh density was determined to be the location of where this plot leveled out. The number
of elements required for this analysis was evaluated to be 9038. The mesh convergence graph is
shown in Figure 40.
Figure 40. Mesh convergence graph of ABAQUS iterations
Figure 37. Bearing stress loading
Figure 38. Stress analysis of beam with low mesh density in
ABAQUS
Figure 39. Stress analysis of beam with high mesh density in
ABAQUS