Simulation of Generative Design Assembly

[egobrien]

Hello,

I have been running into issues when trying to run FEA simulations on an assembly created via Generative Design. I'm running into meshing errors. Does anyone have any advice?

 

Thank you,

[henderh]

Hi @egobrien,

The mesh will succeed, and the study will solve by taking advantage of symmetry.

1. Go to the Simplify workspace, and use Split Body > Select all the bodies > XZ plane as the splitting tool.
2. Return to the Setup workspace and add a Frictionless constraint to the 'cut faces' created by the split.
   • The Frictionless constraint can be copy / pasted to the other load cases.
3. The Force loads must also be reduced by 1/2 since we're using only 1/2 of the model.
   • This hasn't been done in the attached model.
4. For the Pin constraints that lost a face selection due to the body removals, you can just edit > OK and it will clear the warning icon for the missing target (or leave it as-is and the missing targets won't affect the solve). 

The symmetry method will work only when the line of action of a load does not "cross" the plane of symmetry. It didn't appear the load cases had 'sideways' loads that would cross the plane of symmetry.

Hope this helps!