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A component-centric approach to structural analysis of mechanisms : a report submitted to the faculty of the Milwaukee School of Engineering in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Engineering / by Christopher Stack.

by Stack, Christopher [author], Milwaukee School of Engineering

Structural analysis (Engineering)

Structural dynamics

118 leaves : illustrations, some of which are in color ; 29 cm.

Introduction -- Background -- Review of literature -- Methods -- Results and discussion -- Future work -- Conclusions and recommendations -- Appendix A: Average difference in maximum/minimum result tables -- B: Average maximum difference result tables -- C: Unaltered maximum difference in displacement/stress results.

Structural analysis of mechanisms with components that move relative to each other provide a unique problem to the analyst building and running structural models. In these situations, the analyst usually has to either simplify the problem to a point where the results are unusable or maintain multiple models, which will take more effort to maintain and more resources to run the models. If a mechanism is simplified down to just analyzing one component at a time without regard for the other components in the system, the results will not be accurate because the loading effects of the other components will not be accounted for. In cases where all the components are included in the model, the loading effects from the other components will be accounted for; however, a separate model will be required for each position. The Pivot Method presented in this paper is a method of breaking down a complex mechanism into component-level models for each part of the assembly, while still accounting for all loading effects of the other components. In the Pivot Method the component under analysis stays stationary and the loading moves around the component to represent the different positions that it can take.

In order to accomplish this task, a stick model is used to generate loads at each of the joints. Once the pivot loads are known a spreadsheet can be used to transform the loads to a coordinate system in which the individual component is being modeled. With the pivot loads known and all the loads transformed into the proper coordinate system the structural analysis of the component under investigation can continue.

The intention of this paper is to introduce the Pivot Method, and demonstrate that it provides a good trade off between the complexity of methods that model the assembly as a system, and those that focus on the component under question by itself. To accomplish this, the analysis results of the Pivot Method models were compared to results obtained from other methods. The findings indicate that the Pivot Method provides the same results while requiring less effort to model and fewer resources to run. The Pivot Method provides the same stress results as the more complicated methods, while not requiring any more resources to run than simpler methods. Additionally, the Pivot Method is much simpler (to) set up and maintain the models than the more complex methods.

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