Section View of Stress Analysis Result?

[Anonymous]

Hello!

This may defy some fundamental aspect of the way static stress analyses are run, but if it does, the reason escapes me at this point...

I'd like to look at the stress profile through the thickness of my FEA result. I have a cantilevered, odd-shaped, ~1"x2" beam that is both in bending and in tension, and plan to make it from heat treated 4140 steel. Although 4140 is somewhat through-hardenable, there's a gradient to the hardness and the center remains softer than the surface. I need to compare the stress gradient in my FEA result as a function of depth into the part with that of the predicted heat treated hardness. To do this, a cross section of the FEA result would be VERY helpful. I looked through Inventor help and didn't see any examples of this, so I wanted to check here to see if it's even possible.

Thanks for any assistance,

-Rodney Sparks
Creative Spark Engineering, Inc.

[JDMather]

>...there's a gradient to the hardness and the center remains softer than the surface... ... so I wanted to check here to see if it's even possible.

Not in Inventor.

[Jimmy_Yuan|Autodesk]

Hi Rodney,

At present, there is no such functionality to see cross section stress in Inventor. But it has been put into our internal tracking system as 1057236. I think you can do following two ways as workaround:
(1) Split the part along a plane where you want to see the stress and then use make components to insert two bodies into an assembly. Analyze the assembly (bonded contact between two parts) and hide one part, you can see the stress on the face. Be careful to the stress on contacted face since this way may cause stress singularity.
(2) Use probe to detect the stress on any point after part simulation.You can create probe on part face, and then edit its position with coordinate to anywhere you want.

Hoper it help.

Regards,
Jimmy Yuan
Autodesk Simualtion Quality Engineer

[Anonymous]

JD and Jimmy, thanks for your replies.

Jimmy, I was actually in the process of trying your suggestion No. 1 when I saw your reply. However, I think that suggestion No. 2 would suffice for many situations. In the case of the part in question, I could simply move the probe downward through the part in .050" increments and get a clear picture of the stress profile. It just takes much more time than a "section FEA result" command, of course. At this point, I'm just glad that a method exists, however time consuming it might be.

Thanks!

-Rodney

[Jimmy_Yuan|Autodesk]

Hi Rodney,

Glad to know the method is working for you.
For suggestion NO.2, it really consumes a lot of time if many points are needed to show stress. It is a good idea to have a "section FEA result" functionality. We have included this wishlist into our working system.
Thank you for bringing this into our attention. If you have any other question about Inventor simulation, please feel free to let me know.

Regards,
-Jimmy Yuan
Autodesk Simulation Quality Engineer

[davef]

It's been a while since the last post on this thread.  I have the same question as the OP.  I'm running Inventor pro 2015.  Has the ability to section the results of an FEA stress analysis been added yet?  I haven't found it yet in this software release.  Thanks.

[blair]

Sorry still not available.

This functionality has been in Simulation Mechanical (formaly Algor) for about 15 years. I guess as some point if they keep putting all the features of Sim-Mech in Inventor, there won't be a reason to produce Sim-Mech.

[kevin.kruse]

Ok it has been another two years or 6 since the first post.  Has this been added?  I have not been able to figure it out.

Also the above posts mentions tracking system number 1057236.  How do i look that up?  Or can I?

[blair]

Not that I'm aware of, most of my work is done in Sim-Mech doing non-linear analysis.