Use Inventor Stress Analysis for Wood Trusses

[tyannotti]

Can Inventor Stress Analysis be used for determining the strength of an existing wood truss? Specifically, a metal plate connected wood truss?

Certainly we can figure the deformation, no problem.  The issue is with stresses.  I get very high stresses but in very small areas - so probably not valid results - so how do I get more valid or reasonalbe results?

Is there a way to better define the interface between the metal plates and wood for a more realistic model?  Stress Analysis only has "Fixed", "Frictionless", and "Pinned".  Is there something in between, like a limit on the fixed friction?

The real plates would slip or fail before we would reach the stresses I am getting in the results.

Run the simulation to see the results.

I am also trying to learn RISA and Autodesk Frame Analysis - I would MUCH more prefer Stress Analysis - for me its much easier and is very visual.

Thanks

Tony

[Anonymous]

Welcome to the forums!  I can tell you right now that you're not going to get useful numbers from the Stress Analysis tool since it will be modeling the truss as a 3D shape and assuming that the material is isotropic (wood is anisotropic, it has different properties depending on the orientation of the grain).  I would suggest using the Frame Analysis. If you know the tensile strength of the material you can create a custom material for this purpose.  This should be a bit more accurate, but I would be very cautious with any results simply because of the relative unpredicability of the material.

[tony]

Do you have any experience with RISA?  Which is better, RISA or Autodesk Frame Analysis?  What do you think of Robot Structural Analysis?