Friday November 9, 2012 at 5:19pm
Hi
A customer recently asked me if there is a way of combining stress or displacement results in SolidWorks Simulation. The reason you might need this is as follows. Suppose we have 3 load cases: A, B and C. If we solve these we get 3 sets of results - obviously. But what if we want to combine them - say A+B or A+C or A+B+C or A+2B and so on? This might occur if we run a mechanical load case and a thermal stress analysis separately and then want to combine them. If we can combine them easily - without rerunning each contributing study - we can save a heap of time.
Well the answer to the question is "yes" - with Simulation Professional - but it is perhaps not as obvious as you might think. The solution is to use a Pressure Vessel Study. When designing pressure vessels we typically need to add (in a variety of ways) different load cases for burst loads, dead loads, live loads, side loads, seismic loads, self-weight etc. The Pressure Vessel Study is designed to do just this. It does not have loads and fixtures or a mesh itself - but combines the results of other studies. However, why limit it to pressure vessels? Any combination of load cases can be added up - provided the mesh is identical in each study.
Here is a screenshot of the set up of the load cases in a simple example. Note that as well as linear combination the software can combine the results using the 'Square of the Sum of Squares' (SRSS) method.
Andy Fulcher
Technical Manager
Solid Solutions Management Ltd