Simulating Wire Bending with three different materials and comparing the results
OBJECTIVE
To perform an analysis to simulate the bending of a wire in ANSYS and using three different materials Copper Alloy (Non Linear), Aluminium Alloy (Non Linear) and Magnesium Alloy ( Non Linear) for the wire alone.
Importing the CAD model
The CAD model is imported and viewed using spaceclaim. The CAD model is checked for any errors.
Simulation setup
Material Assignment
The wheel and lever part are assigned with structural steel material. The wire is assigned with three different materials for three different cases.
Case (1) - Aluminium Alloy (Non Linear)
Case (2) - Magnesium Alloy ( Non Linear)
Case (3) - Copper Alloy (Non Linear)
Contact definition
A frictional contact is defined between the lever and wire, with a frictional coefficient of 0.2
Contact settings
Formulation - Augmented Lagrange
Normal stiffness factor - 0.1
Update stiffness - Each Iteration
Interface treatment - Add Offset, Ramped Effects
Similarly a second frictional contact is defined between the wheel and wire, with a frictional coefficient of 0.2
Joint creation
A body-ground revolute joint is defined by selecting the inner surface of the lever hole, with Z-axis as rotational axis.
Mesh Generation
Using patch conforming method all the three parts are set to Tetrahedrons.
The wire and surfaces of wheel and lever which contact wire are alone meshed with element size of 2mm by using face sizing method.
A coordinate system is created in the critical part of wire bending position. With this coordinate a 7mm radius sphere of influence is created. Area under this sphere of influence are meshed with an element size of 0.8mm in order to get much more accurate results.
Final mesh
Analysis settings
The simulation is done in 8 steps with auto time stepping on.
The wheel is fixed by assigning the inner surface of the wheel's hole as a fixed support
The lever joint is given a rotation of about 140 degrees such that the wire bends around the wheel.
Results
The maximum time step was 2. The solver converged at various time steps and dropped down to a lower time step value. This shows that solver converged without any errors.
Case (1) - Aluminium Alloy (Non Linear)
Equivalent stress
Equivalent strain
Equivalent stress (wire alone)
Equivalent strain (wire alone)
Case (2) - Magnesium Alloy (Non Linear)
Equivalent stress (wire alone)
Equivalent strain (wire alone)
Case (3) - Copper Alloy ( Non Linear)
Equivalent stress (wire alone)
Equivalent strain (wire alone)
Comparison of results of three cases
On comparing the results, copper alloy has the highest induced stress value and magnesium alloy has least strain value.
Ansys file link
https://drive.google.com/file/d/1fJdZ33CRmsfke5wr51K0mubaGH15iKjQ/view?usp=sharing