EXERCISE 5 : 1ST ASSESSMENT

This is the first of the two exercises that contributes to the assessment of this course. This
exercise carries 40% of the course marks.

To protect a passenger from impacts an every modern car has a seat belt system similar to that
shown in Fig.1.

Fig.1 The car seat belt

An important detail of a car seatbelt is a seat-belt buckle clip shown in Fig 2. In use, the fabric
part of the belt is looped through the narrow slot on the right of the diagram, and the tongue of
the belt shown on the left engages with the buckle, with the slot in the tongue engaging with
the plunger in the buckle. The seat belt fabric is 50 mm wide and the belt is designed to carry
a load produced by an 80kg human body under car deceleration of 8.8g (1g=9.81m/sec2). For
analysis purposes, it may be assumed that the tension in the belt is constant along the belt
width and length.
82

44 13 25

all internal slot radii = 1.4mm

6 12
the clip thickness 2.2 mm
all dimensions are given in
the sketch in mm

30 18 56 80

rad 2
9

6
rad 4

Fig.2 The seat-belt clip

University of Sussex Finite Element Analysis Dr. E.Petrov

The clip is fabricated from stainless steel having Young’s modulus of 205GPa, Poisson ratio
of 0.3. The material plasticity properties are described by the isotropic hardening plasticity
law with the yield strength stress 230 MPa and the hardening tangent modulus 2.3GPa.

For the clip to be approved it must be shown that the buckle will not fail under the specified
load.

Work required
Carry out an ANSYS analysis of the stresses produced by the loading specified. Comment on
the stress levels obtained, and if the stresses appear to be excessive, make suggestions by
which the stresses might be reduced and carry out an analysis of a modified design to show
that such modifications will reduce the stresses. You may also try to optimize the clip shape
to reduce its weight and, therefore, the material expense. Remember, that the loading
specified is a “one time only” loading and would only occur in the event of an accident. If
this load were to be experienced, the whole of the seatbelt mechanism would be replaced, so
if the clip permanently deforms, this is not a particular problem.

NOTE that the loads, overall dimensions and the material specification cannot be modified,
but you can make reasonable changes in the fillet radii, location and shape of the slots for
buckle and belt in the belt clip.

Work to be submitted.
A report detailing the results should be submitted to the School office before the deadline
date. Remember that submission of work to the departmental office must be before 4:00 pm.
The report should include not only a statement of the results, but also an indication as to the
type of element used, the reasons for using that element and the procedure by which you have
ensured that the results of the FE analysis are realistic. The usual format of a report should be
used and the usual penalties for late submission will apply. Marks will be awarded for the
report layout and structure as well as for the results obtained. Some general advice is given
below,

General advice.
There are major parts in this assignment. One is carrying out the FE stress analysis and the
others are interpreting and justifying the results obtained and writing the report. Remember
that all the “client” wants to know is whether the proposed design is satisfactory. Because the
stresses are not expected to vary through the clip thickness, a two dimensional element with
thickness set to the thickness of the clip will be sufficient, as you did in Exercise 1.

Writing the report.

A report of a standard structure is required. There are no strict requirements (although more
than 35 pages is not recommended) on the report length, but it should clearly represent your
work.
No matter what the length, all reports have the same basic structure. The individual sections
may not have the section headings exactly as shown here below, but the general outline is
common to all reports.
All pages should be numbered. All figures should be numbered and labeled clearly. All
figures should be referred to in the discussion.
University of Sussex Finite Element Analysis Dr. E.Petrov

References on literature should be listed at the back of the report and numbered. Only use the
reference numbers within the report text and do not state the full reference details as they
should be only stated in the references section. Use a standard notation for references. Heavy
reliance on web sources is not recommended.

1. Summary. Reports must have a summary. This is a brief statement of what the report
is about, together with a summary of what results were obtained. Often the summary
gives an indication to a reader of whether it is worth spending any more time reading
the report.
2. Objectives (statement of what the report is about - analysing a component, deciding
whether to produce a new product, demonstrating why a new design would be
beneficial etc.). Reports must be about something: this tells the reader what that
something is.
3. Procedure description - to give enough information so that someone else can repeat the
work if necessary, or can follow the way in which the work was done. It does not
need a step-by-step description as you must assume that the reader basically knows
how to do the work, but to repeat the work it is necessary to know the settings that you
have used for equipment, building models etc. In ANSYS, therefore, it would only be
necessary to say what elements were used, why this element type was selected for the
analysis, what are real constants, perhaps make some comments on creation of the
finite element mesh and on the choice of the mesh density.
4. Results. These might be the results of an analysis presented in tables, plots or graphs.
It’s basically the raw data with any relevant calculations. Plots produced by ANSYS
should be provided with white background since the standard black background makes
the plots unreadable in many cases.
5. Use different FE meshes and/or mesh refinement to prove that the FE mesh used in the
analysis is sufficient and the results are independent of the mesh.
6. Validation of results. In the addition to the mesh convergence study, try to validate
your results by comparing with analytical solutions (even for a simple geometry).
7. Discussion of results. This is the “meat” of the report, but be careful, particularly with
reports that use the results of computer simulations. Just because ANSYS has the
ability to produce lots of pretty diagrams does not mean that they have to be used. To
know whether any particular diagram should be included, ask yourself the question
“does inclusion of this diagram help the discussion?” If the answer is yes, then the
diagram should be referred to in the discussion, and a comment included showing why
inclusion is helpful and what it might mean. If you want to include graphs, make sure
that the axes are labeled.
8. Conclusions. These can be quite brief, and should be linked to the objective.
9. All the ANSYS files created for the finite element analysis of this problem need to be
attached to the report (files with extensions *.log and *.db are a must): in CD or USB
drive.

Report Assessment

Maximum mark: 100

Weighting of this submission in the total course assessment: 40%
Marking scheme of the contribution:
• Report and presentation of work: 30%
• Finite element analysis: modeling and solution: 40%
• Understanding, validation and discussion of results: 30%