Projects

 

 

Finite element analysis project

 

Example final project report (an old project from 1999)

 

The final project will be open-ended, and is intended to provide an opportunity to apply the topics covered in class to a problem that will be useful to you, or will allow you to explore a topic of interest. The main purpose of the project is to give you a chance to define a problem, instead of just following instructions. Suggestions for possible topics include:

• If you are on the car team, you can use the project to do a detailed FEA analysis of a component you need designed or optimized.
• Design a protective case for a cell-phone or tablet
• Some of you will be working on ScM or honors theses, or working in a lab, which has a need for stress analysis or FEA computations. You could use the class project to try out some ideas.
• Design, analyze, 3D print, and test a component you might be interested in
• You could extend the bow and arrow calculations from Homework 7 to analyze its dynamics. There is a previous attempt at this problem here that worked out reasonably well (it was a bit funny to include results with and without the factor of 2 in the report though) - you could extend the calculations by analyzing a different bow type (the recurve bow should be feasible, the compound bow would be harder); looking into the archer's paradox, or doing some parameter studies to understand, eg, the influence of bow shape, arrow properties (mass, stiffness), etc on performance. There is quite a lot of literature on the topic. There is also a lot of experimental data for three bows here
• Analyze wave propagation in a 'Slinky.' As a real challenge you could try to model its 'walk' down a slope, but that's likely to be a very difficult calculation.
• You could analyze the Engn40 mass launcher, but do the calculation properly by modeling the springs as deformable solids with mass. We now have high-speed video that could be compared with,and provide boundary conditions to, your FEA calculations (it turns out that the launch velocities are usually higher than the ENGN40 calculations predict; it would be interesting to explain this).
• There are a lot of interesting questions in biology that can be studied with solid mechanics - what is the strongest shape for a tree, and do trees actually have that shape? How does a gecko stick to a wall? What makes clamshells so strong? All these questions have been studied extensively, of course, but you can try coming up with some original ideas or improve on earlier work.

 

General advice:

• It is helpful to have a very clear goal in mind for the calculations - ideally you want to calculate or optimize a small number of performance metrics for your design. Stiffness; safety factor, etc. Sometimes models are helpful to interpret experiments. For some of the suggestions above, experimental data are available (we could lend you a high speed camera to measure the wave speed in a slinky, for example). Setting up a model, validating its predictions experimentally, and explaining any discrepancy makes a very easy story to write up.
• It's helpful to find a way to set up your model in a series of smaller sub-steps, and get each one working before moving on to something more complicated. For example if you analyze the mass launcher, just work out how to model one of the springs by itself; then try to add just a single mass; and so on. It's helpful to have a simple, achievable goal that can be completed quickly, so you know you have something you can put in a report, and then if time permits try something more complex.
• Keep your simulations simple. Contact, large deformations, plasticity, fracture and failure can all be modeled in FEA, but will often cause a simulation to crash. It's best to add these ingredients to a simulation one at a time.

 

 

Organization: 

• This is an individual project. If you want to work on a complex problem where a team effort would be helpful that's OK, but everyone on the team should tackle some aspect of the problem separately and submit a separate report.
• A short description of the problem you'd like to work on, and your planned approach, is due on Friday Nov 8. A good structure for your proposal would be to answer the questions listed in Section 1.2 of the notes.
• Please submit final reports before final exam period starts (drop-dead date of December 11)