Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

Introduction
The aim of this task was to use FEA (Finite Element Analysis) software (ABAQUS) to
determine the maximum stress and maximum vertical deflection of a cantilever beam subject
to a load of 20kg the end and compare the effect of mesh density and element size on these
values. An additional task was to change the load to 600kg for the largest mesh density
range and examine the effects. The material properties for the aluminium beam are given
below:

ABAQUS Methodology
Firstly the rectangular beam was sketched and the correct dimensions were applied, 550mm
by 25mm and the rectangle was extruded outwards by 2mm creating the 3D beam.
Next, the material properties parameters had to be inputted. Since the beam will undergo
elastic-plastic behaviour and deformation, certain values needed to be calculated before
analysis can be carried out. The Youngs Modulus and Poissons ratio were already supplied
with the data and can be put in straight away, but as the material also behaves plastically
beyond the yield stress, it had to be assigned a plastic strain value and the respective stress
value. This can easily be calculated analytically:

Where:

Two sets of stress and plastic strain values must be entered and these were 503 MPa @ 0
value of plastic strain and 634.92 MPa @ 0.0955 plastic strain. As we only have two sets of

Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

values there will be some inaccuracy as the best guess for the plastic behaviour of the
material on a stress-strain curve will be linear, however the values should be sufficient
enough to produce a close enough value. Next, the part was defined as a homogenous solid
section and the section was assigned to the part. The model was then assembled by
creating an Instance and creating a step in addition to the initial step already created by the
software. Then a boundary condition was applied to the fixed end of the cantilever beam and
it was set to ENCASTRE which constrains all degrees of freedom at the fixed end.
Then the load was applied as a concentrated load at the opposite end of the beam where
the 20kg weight would hang. The load had to be split between the 2 vertices of the beam at
that end as you can only apply a load to a node. These loads were 98.1N each in the Y
direction.
Now the model is ready to be meshed for analysis. It must be seeded first and the global
seeds must be input. This value can be increased or decreased until the number of elements
in your mesh falls within the range you require. Now the part is meshed and is ready for
analysis.

Beam showing Boundary condition at fixed end, Load on other end (left) and meshed beam (right)

Creating a job (deform) and submitting it for a full analysis would give the results for this
task. The results were then viewed and also note the CPU time taken from the monitor.
Changing the output variables to Von Mises stress and Displacement in the Y direction will
give you the results required. But first, let us calculate the analytical/true values for deflection
for this cantilever beam with an end load of 20kg so it can be compared to the results
obtained from FEA analysis:

Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

2.604x 10-9 m4
0.05828m = 58.28mm
Where:
b = breath (2mm), h= height (25mm), F= force (196.2N),
E = Youngs Modulus (71.7 x 109), I = Second moment of inertia,
= maximum deflection

Results

Element Range Required

No of Elements

30-60

31

160-300

207

600-1200

828

2500-6000

4396

~ 9000

7790

(Table 1)

Max Vertical Deflection

Max Von Mises Stress

CPU Time

58.21

528.21

0.2

58.13

555.44

0.4

58.23

567.38

0.8

58.30

527.58

6.0

58.32

535.07

10.6

(Table 2)

Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

Graph Plots and Diagrams

570.00

Maximum Stress (MPa)

565.00
560.00
555.00

550.00
545.00
540.00
535.00
530.00

(Graph 1)

525.00
520.00
0

2000
4000
6000
8000
Number of Elements (Mesh Density

10000

Maximum Deflection(mm)

58.35
58.30
58.25
58.20
58.15

(Graph 2)

58.10
0

2000

4000

6000

8000

10000

Number of Elements (Mesh Density

12.0

Total CPU time

10.0
8.0
6.0
4.0
2.0

(Graph 3)
0.0
0

2000

4000

6000

8000

Number of Elements (Mesh Density)

10000

Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

Deformed Beam representation with contours from ABAQUS:

Deformed Beam with 31 elements, showing both Von Mises Stress and Vertical Displacement

Deformed Beam with 7790 elements, showing both Von Mises Stress and Vertical Displacement
Discussion
The general trend from the results obtained is that as the number of elements of the part
(mesh density) increases, the stress and deflection values begin to roughly converge. For
maximum stress (Graph 1), the fluctuation begins to lessen as you increase the number of
elements and it is possible to see that especially when using over 6000 elements, the results
become much more accurate and convergence is evident. The graphs suggest that they
would converge to a value of 535 MPa for maximum stress.
With the stress-no of elements curve, there is a large fluctuation between 0-1000 elements
and decreases dramatically after 4000 elements, however to converge to a true value for
maximum stress, further FEA analysis must be carried out to verify the predicted
convergence preferably using 8000+ elements.

Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

The contour plots of the deformed shape show that as you increase mesh density, it
becomes more accurate as for the Von Mises stress analysis, it is much easier to locate the
areas of high stress and low stress just by looking at the contour plots.
The deflection- no of elements curve (Graph 2) seems to hover around the true value of
58.28mm and excluding what seems to an anomaly for the 207 element result, there is
definite convergence to a value of 58.32mm for deflection. The 207 element result at first
glance seems to be a large anomaly however the FEA output values were never more than
0.26% out, the 207 element result having the largest error from the true value. This could be
because deflection can be calculated analytically and so just by knowing the load and its
location, beam dimensions and material data, the program could get a rough value for
deflection with simple calculations whereas Von Mises Stress is a lot more difficult to
calculate and requires much more complex calculations and analysis.
There is definitely a linear relationship between CPU analysis time and the number of
elements. The graph (Graph 3) seems to suggest that the analysis time increases by one
second for around every 1700 elements you add to your mesh.
If a more complex part was being simulated in ABAQUS, the CPU time would dramatically
increase and would be much more difficult to use a large number of elements in analysis due
to a large memory being occupied and the CPU taking a much longer time to compute the
results.
When a 600kg load (5886N) was applied in the program in place of the original 20kg load,
the program presented an error message suggesting that the strain increment has exceeded
fifty times the strain to cause first yield and that the program will not attempt plasticity
calculations due to this large strain increment. To verify this, the stress and deflection for the
600kg load will be calculated analytically:

1.75m
This theoretical value of vertical deflection is over 3 times the beam own length and
when the plastic strain value was only 0.0955 the beam had to have been undergoing
plastic strain and without a doubt would have passed its ultimate tensile stress of
572MPa resulting in failure of the beam which is why ABAQUS was unable to run the
calculation due to the strain increment being too high i.e. over 50 times the strain at
the yield strength, which was 0.0125 so once it reached a strain value of more than
0.625, the program would not have completed the job analysis. The beam has most
definitely surpassed its rupture strength.

Ravi Patel - 1101066

FEA Assignment

University of Birmingham

Conclusion
Overall it is fair to say that as you increase the number of elements (mesh density), your
results become much more accurate and tend to converge to the true value. When the
element size is small, the FEA software cannot perform precise complex calculations as
these can only be performed at the nodes. Therefore by increasing the number of elements
(decreasing their size), the software will produce more accurate results due to the larger
number of finite elements. However, this will only be true up till convergence occurs because
after this, increasing the number of elements will have little or no effect on the precision of
results but instead be counter-productive as it will just be increasing CPU time and memory
usage. For other complex part analysis, a reasonable compromise must be made between
the two.