Blog Post 18: Second FEA for Design Concept 3

Here are the optimised components I made from the first round of FEA along with results from further FEA:

Body Gripper:

Substantial modifications have been made to Concept 3’s body gripper after preliminary FEA results identified a large area of material failure in the connecting arm. These include widening of the arm’s base to produce a triangle support structure as well as rounding off any sharp edges, particularly where the top section meets the connecting arm. After adding the support structure around the bottom of the arm, I eliminated material from the centre of the structure. The results shown above indicate that this has not adversely affected the component’s ability to absorb the torsional force and has served to keep the weight down. Along with material eliminated from the centre of the top section and despite the addition of support material around the bottom section, total weight savings stand at 15% for this component. Any further optimisations at this stage should be focused solely on keeping weight down as the functionality of this component is now guaranteed.

Middle Section:

Here you can see the results attained from the second round of FEA I carried out after making modifications to Concept 3’s middle (rotating) section. Support material has been added around the base of one of the vertical grippers - an area previously identified as structurally inapt. Material has also been eliminated from the areas either side of the gripper path. Results indicate that the additional support material has successfully negated the stress concentration and has allowed the gripper to better absorb the torsional force exerted by the component’s body.

Handle:

The changes I made to Concept 3’s handle since its first round of FEA include the addition of support material at the right angles joining the dowel connectors to the arms and removal of material throughout. You can see that these modifications have served to mitigate high stress concentrations and have allowed force exerted from pushing the handle down to act over a larger area as opposed to the sharp corners that were previously there. The FEA results show that removal of material (12%) from the arms has had no negative effect on the structural integrity of the component.