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