Table of Contents

1.   Preparations in StudioTools
2.   Preparations in I-DEAS
3.   Analysis in I-DEAS
4.   Solution in I-DEAS

4.1   If I-DEAS has not encountered errors ...
4.2   Interpretation of Stress values
4.3   Interpretation of Displacement values
4.4   Fixing a degenerate mesh
4.5   Example Analysis for several wheels
4.6   Comparison of above Examples

5.   Assignment

The goal of this tutorial is to analyze the structure of a wheel, i.e. the forces acting on all components (hub, spokes, rim) in this wheel. You will be importing your wheel from StudioTools to I-DEAS, which is a CAD/CAM/CAE software package that will allow you to analyze the 3 dimensional model.

Analysis of this kind can be very complex given all the different forces acting on a wheel, whether it be gravity, acceleration, weight of the bike and rider, torque, friction, etc. We will thus simplify the analysis while still maintaining a reasonable reality to the process.

Before performing FEA on your own model, you may wish to download the following example model for a first attempt at FEA:

WheelExample.wire

Save the model in your Alias/user_data/demo/wire directory.