Cantilever Beam

Problem Description
12 mm dia

50 N

8 mm dia

600 mm

X-section pipe

A uniform cantilever beam of Aluminum pipe of length 600 mm as shown above has a force of 50N acting on its free end. The cross section of the beam is show on right hand side with thickness of 2 mm.

Analytical Calculations:
Cantilever beam with a point load at the extreme end. Maximum deflection occurs at the free end and is: FL3 ymax 3EI F 50 N L 600 mm E 70 109 Pa 2700 Kg / m3 Distance from neutral plane = yneu =5 Moment of Inertia I (source: Mechanics of Engineering Materials Page 600)
Iz I

4 4 ( Router Rinner ) 4

4 4 (6 4 ) 816.8 mm4 4
50 N (600mm)3 62.96 mm 3 70000 MPa 816.8 mm 4 (1)

ymax

Bending stress is given by My 600 mm 50 N 6 mm bending 220.368 Mpa 816.8 mm 4 I

(2)

Ansys Simulation: Part I- Preprocessing

1. 2. Start the Ansys GUI console. From Main menu click Preferences and select Structural and press ok.

From drop down utility menu select file->change title and enter a new title for the file (for instance Cantilever beam). Then press plot->replot the new title of the file appears. 4. From the main menu select Preprocessor->Modeling->Create->Keypoints->In Active Cs Enter the following keypoints. Keypoint x (mm) y (mm) z (mm) 1 0 0 0 2 600 0 0 5. From the main menu select Preprocessor->Modeling->Create->Lines->Lines>Straight Line Select the two keypoints just created and press ok. 6. From the main menu select Preprocessor->Element Type->Add/Edit/Delete as no element type has yet be specified, so Add is the only option and is to be selected. A library of materials appears and Pipe- Elastic straight 16 element is selected. The selected element appears in the Defined Element Type window. Press Options in the same window. Change the option of K6 from Exclude output to Include output. Close the window.

3.

7.

Apply the geometric properties to the pipe element we have selected. From Main menu select Preprocessor->Real Constants->Add/Edit/Delete. Select the Pipe16 element and Edit its real constant values. A pipe of required geometric

properties is defined. 8. Now we need to specify the Material properties. . From Main menu select Preprocessor->Material Prop->Material Models , A new window with available material models appears. Select the Structural->Linear->Elastic>Isotropic Enter the material properties of Aluminum for Modulus of Elasticity Ex=70000 (M Pa) and poisson ratio PRXY=0.33. Press OK.

Next step is the discretization of body in small elements/cells through meshing. Preprocessor->Meshing-> Size Cntrls- > ManualSize- > Lines -> All Lines enter the element size as 15 and press OK. This creates the elements with 15mm length. The alternate option is to define 40 as number of element divisions of total 600 mm long beam. 10 Preprocessor->Meshing->Mesh Tool->Mesh select the line and the press OK. Meshing is done. Preprocessing part is complete now and it is recommended to save your work. File->save as -> cantilever.db and press OK.

9.

Part II Solution:
1. 2. Solution->Analysis Type-> New Analysis select static Solution->Define Loads- > Apply > Structural -> Displacement -> On Keypoints select the left end keypoint (which is to be fixed in the wall or

fully constrained), select All DOF and press OK. This shows all the constraints appearing in the graphics window on left keypoint. 3. Solution->Define Loads- > Apply > Structural ->Force/Moment->On Keypoints select the right side keypoint, press OK. Select the direction of force/mom as FY, apply as constant value and assign the value of -50. 4. We are ready for solving this system now. Solution > Solve > Current LS Have a look at the status window to recheck the case set up and press OK. Solution is done. Part III Post Processing: 1. General Postproc->Plot Results -> Deformed Shape->Deformed Shape change the default to Def+undeformed.

Observe that the maximum deformation comes out to be 63mm which is almost same as our analytical one given by equation 1. 2. General Postproc->Plot results -> Contour Plot -> Nodal Solution various options appear for contour variable selection. Select DOF solution>Displacement vector sum in lower drop down box select deformed shape with undeformed model.

Instead of this graphical representation we can get the nodal deformation in numerical format by General Postproc->List - > Nodal Solution

We can separately plot various element properties. For example, for plotting the von Mises stress along the element we need to select General Postproc->Element Table->Define Table select Stress category and corresponding von Mises and press OK. Now a new Element Table has been created containing entries of our interest i.e., von Mises stress on each element.

General Postproc->Element Table->Plot Elem Table select the item to be plotted as SEQV and press OK.

General Postproc->Element Table->List Elem Table and select SEQV and press OK. This gives the list of all the elements and their respective von Mises stress. The list shows the maximum von Mises stress of 220.37 MPa on element 1. It is also very close to our analytically calculated 220.368 MPa with an error of . Bending Moment Diagram: For plotting the bending moment diagram, the bending moment data is to be retrieved from Element Table. Before that we need to understand how Ansys stores data for this pipe16 element. Type help pipe16 in the command input window and press Enter.

Table16.3 and 16.4 contains the corresponding data of left side node called node I and right side node called node J. Also, it can be seen that SMISC6 corresponds to MMONZ or member moment about Z-axis for node I and SMISC12 corresponds to MMONZ or member moment about Z-axis for node J. So, we need to take out these data table and plot them. General Postproc->Element Table->Define Table->Add

select the By sequence num and SMISC , put SMISC, 6 in the selection and name it IMOMZ in the user label for item press Apply. Similarly, for node J, select the By sequence num and SMISC name it JMOMZ and in selection put SMISC12 and press OK. Click 'Close' in the 'Element Table Data' window and close the 'Element Table' Menu. Select General Postproc->Plot Results-> Contour Plot- > Line Elem Res for element table at node I, select the IMOMZ and for element table at node J, select the JMOMZ and press OK. The maximum absolute bending moment is at node 1 and is 30000. It can be verified to be correct as 50Nx 600 mm = 30000 Nmm.