Hello all,

I am having task to determine the strength analysis (stress/strain) of a translating machine part (body). The part is driven by a set of gears, placed on the top of the body. The input is a constant acceleration value to the propultion engine. Firstly I should do a 2D analysis with a retangle representing the machine part. 

I am new to this subject, so any idea, approach,  advice or helping material is welcomed. 

Hi all, 

[Warning: The writing is long, as is usually the case with my posts :)]

It all began with a paper that I proposed for an upcoming conference in India. The extended abstract got accepted, of course, but my work is still in progress, and today I am not sure if I can meet the deadline. So, I may perhaps withdraw it, and then submit a longer version of it to a journal, later.

What is stress? Who has ever seen stress? Is stress a physical quantity?

Professor Yi-Heng Chen, Xi’an Jiaotong University, 710049, P.R.China

e-mail: yhchen2@mail.xjtu.edu.cn

As a consultant in computational mechanics, I currently help write some FEM-related code, and while doing this job, an episode from a recent past came to my mind. Let me go right on to the technical issue, keeping aside the (not so good) particulars of that episode. (In case you are curious: it happened outside of my current job, during a job interview.)

If you are a design engineer, FE analyst, researcher, or any professional dealing with stress analysis in your work, I seek answers to a couple of questions from you:

Question 1:

Dear All,

 I think that many students are looking for some tutorials about writing a UMAT in ABAQUS.

You can find a comprehensive tutorial for elastic problems.

This file contains: 

• Motivation

• Steps Required in Writing a UMAT or VUMAT

Dear Sirs,

I'm trying to derive an strain energy in a small volume 2a x 2b x 2t.

I can derive "The rest terms are ommited" by myself . 

By the way, I can't derive the DT2 term in the 2nd row of the figure.

Please help with reference or tips.

 Thanks,

Jin Kim

I am doing research on the stresses that are produced when a retainer (a thermoplastic sheet) is placed on the teeth. We've designed the project so that we take an initial scan of the sheet and a final "shifted" scan of the sheet. We'd like to compare, find the strain, and calculate the stress neccessary to produce this strain.

I was hoping to use FEA for this...is it possible? I have access to Abaqus and Ansys, and where can i find the commands that allow me to do this.

Many musculoskeletal soft tissues, such as tendons, ligaments, meniscus and cartilage are inhomogeneous. Hence, during mechanical loading it is likely that a nonuniform strain pattern occurs within the tissue. These nonuniform strain patterns may assist in successful load transmission and minimize rupture of the tissue during physiological loading. Determination of local material properties will likely be important for successful function and design of tissue engineered replacements. In the late 1980’s uniaxial tensile tests were conducted using a video camera in conjunction with surface markers to document local strain distributions on the surface of ligaments. Photoelasticity has also been used to document local strain patterns.

In between stress and strain, which one is the more fundamental physical quantity? Or is it the case that each is defined independent of the other and so nothing can be said about their order? Is this the case?

To begin with these questions, consider the fact that first we have to apply a force to an object and it is only then that the object is observed to have been deformed or strained. Accordingly, one may say that forces produce strains, and therefore, it seems that stress has to be more fundamental. If so, how come stress cannot be measured directly? This is the paradox I would like to address here.

Of course, to begin with, my position is that you can never directly measure stress.

We published this paper in APL on a study of the deformation near interfaces. It provides insight in the strain localization at the interface and its influence on the deformation in bulk metals. 

Abstract An optical full-field strain mapping technique has been used to provide direct evidence for the existence of a highly localized strain at the interface of stacked Nb/Nb bilayers during the compression tests loaded normal to the interface. No such strain localization is found in the bulk Nb away from the interface. The strain localization at the interfaces is due to a high void fraction resulting from the rough surfaces of Nb in contact, which prevents the extension of deformation bands in bulk Nb crossing the interface, while no distinguished feature from the stress-strain curve is detected.

A (001) surface of silicon consists of terraces of two variants, which have an identical atomic structure, except for a 90° rotation. We formulate a model to evolve the terraces under the combined action of electric current and applied strain. The electric current motivates adatoms to diffuse by a wind force, while the applied strain motivates adatoms to diffuse by changing the concentration of adatoms in equilibrium with each step. To promote one variant of terraces over the other, the wind force acts on the anisotropy in diffusivity, and the applied strain acts on the anisotropy in surface stress. Our model reproduces experimental observations of stationary states, in which the relative width of the two variants becomes independent of time. Our model also predicts a new instability, in which a small change in experimental variables (e.g., the applied strain and the electric current) may cause a large change in the relative width of the two variants.

We propose a model of persistent step flow, emphasizing dominant kinetic processes and strain effects. Within this model, we construct a morphological phase diagram, delineating a regime of step flow from regimes of step bunching and island formation. In particular, we predict the existence of concurrent step bunching and island formation, a new growth mode that competes with step flow for phase space, and show that the deposition flux and temperature must be chosen within a window in order to achieve persistent step flow. The model rationalizes the diverse growth modes observed in pulsed laser deposition of SrRuO3 on SrTiO3

 Physical Review Letters 95, 095501 (2005)

Augustin Louis Cauchy ( 21 August 1789 - 23 May 1857) was a French mathematician and mechanician. In mechanics, he in 1822 formalized the stress concept in the context of three-dimensional thoery, showed its properties as consisting of a 3 by 3 symmetric arrays of numbers that transform as a tensor, derived the equations of motion for a continuum in terms of the components of stress, and gave the specific development of the theory of linear elasticity for isotropic solids. As part of his work, Cauchy also introduced the equations which express the six components of strain, three extensinal and three shear, in terms of derivatives of displacements for the case when all those derivatives are much smaller than unity; similar expressions had been given earlier by Euler in expressing rates of straining in terms of the derivatives of the velocity field in a fluid. (cited from Mechanics of Solids by J.R. Rice) Read more...