Simulating a steel sphere pressing over a steel plate and calculating the induced plastic strains in the plate

OBJECTIVE

To perform an analysis to simulate a sphere pressing on a plate.

Importing the CAD model

The CAD model is imported and viewed using spaceclaim. The CAD model is checked for any errors.

Since the sphere and plate are symmetry about 2 axis, only a quater part is simulated and this results can be used fro the symmetric part. Thus by taking advantage of symmetric nature of the model the computational power requirements is reduced

Simulation setup

Material Assignment

The sphere is assigned with structural steel and plate us assigned with structural steel with non linear properties.

Symmetry definition

The CAD model is defined with two symmetry region in X-axis and Z-axis.

Contact definition

A frictional contact is defined between sphere surface and the plate with a frictional coefficient of 0.74

Mesh Generation

The plate body and outer surface of sphere are meshed with an element size of 0.5mm

Analysis settings

The sphere is given a 4mm downward motion such that it presses the plate and then retracted. The bottom surface of plate is made as a fixed support

Results

Directional Deformation (Y-axis)

Total Deformation

Equivalent stress

Equivalent Elastics strain

Equivalent Plastic strain

It can be seen that even after the sphere retracted, there are plastics strains present in the plate and some amount of residual stress.

The plate is completely deformed and strains are plastic in nature.

Equivalent stress, Equivalent strain, Equivalent plastics strain are calculated for whole setup whereas Equivalent stress 2, Equivalent strain 2, Equivalent plastics strain 2 are calculated for the plate with non linear properties alone

Ansys file link

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1NGi-D6HOGQrkP1BZY55RHAqaDBshMM0q/view?usp=sharing