Simply supported beam - Inventor Stress Analysis - Constraints

[nick.barbour]

Hi,

I was hoping someone might help out with how best to constrain a simply supported beam?

I've seen several threads with the same question but none I've seen have had a clear answer that solves all issues.

I've completed a hand calc on the beam so know the deflection and stress I'm expecting, and was trying to verify this using Inventor's Stress Analysis module.

The beam is 10M long supported at the extreme ends supported an a sliding roller support.

Universal Channel dims are 406.4mm high, 403mm wide, flange is 42.9mm, web is 26.6mm, radius R15.2mm - material is S460 steel. A distributed load of 172KN/M is applied across the top face of the channel (the 403mm wide x 10M face.

Doing a manual calc on this I get that deflection should be 87.4mm. The surface stress for both sides of beam should be 356.5N/mm2

Attempting this in Inventor using various constraint methods the best method I found was...

fixed at left hand side on the edgefized at the right hand side edge but free to move in Zright hand side showing it can move in Z

This gives me very close figures regarding deflection and surface stress when probed in the middle area, however because the edge is rigid and can't rotate, you get a very high stress flare at the two fixes edges because they can't rotate. This can be ignored by changing the colour bar to have a max value of 460mpa etc but isn't ideal.

Could anyone guide me as to how this beam should be constrained?

Thanks in advance for any help or advice.

[JDMather]

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@nick.barbour wrote:

Hi,

I was hoping someone might help out with how best to constrain a simply supported beam?

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How is the beam supported in the real world?  
Can you build a simple assembly that represents real world conditions?

[nick.barbour]

Hi JD,

The beam has a set of welded flanges with a pin connection at either end. The beam is held in position via the pinned connection and can swivel as it takes load.

I could model whole assembly but thought it might be possible to recreate this simply, otherwise computation time would be really long when this should be a simple simulation shouldn't it?

Thanks for your help

2017-11-20 13_05_26-Autodesk Inventor Professional 2018 - [FD-08-304-500.iam].png 

[Daniel248 · Accepted solution]

This might help:

https://forums.autodesk.com/t5/inventor-forum/rotational-joint/m-p/6387618#M600576

[nick.barbour]

Cheers Daniel, I hadn't dropped on that video. It looks to achieve what I'm doing.

I like the idea of modelling half the beam, and adding a frictionless constraint on the cut face.