I know this is a very broad/challenging question, however any responses would be helpful for my understanding.
So let say I want to model the shrinkage of a 3D object on cooling, how would computer simulations go about this? I have heard of software like ANSYS being used for such modelling, but how does it actually work under the hood?
Thank you!
In: Engineering
I am a Mechanical engineer but it’s been a while since I dove deep on FEA so I may be slightly off.
Basically, with a known material, shape, size of a part/assembly, along with known external influences such as temp, gravity, other forces, etc, you can calculate the resulting displacements, forces, etc. These calculations can be done by hand with simple shapes like a bar. The tricky part is that to get a precise answer, you need to break down any complex part into tiny pieces with known volume, surface area, mass, etc. That is called “meshing”.
To get a good answer on any realistic part, it takes thousands or millions of these calculations. So the software does all the work of meshing and then all the calculations that are required once you’ve provided all the necessary variables.
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