Understanding Structural Analysis(Basics) in Less than 10 minutes

I am back with my Fifth article in the series of “understanding FEA in Less than 10 minutes “. This article is going to about structural analysis and the last article in this series. Structural analysis is a little bit more complicated than thermal or fluid analysis because there are many sub classification in structural analysis. Let me list out these classification of structural analyses available in the ANSYS.

In total there are seven different types of structural analyses available in the ANSYS family. They are mentioned below with a short description about them.

Static Structural Analysis - The most common type of structural analysis, almost all of the mechanical Engineer's are aware of this analysis, The basic idea behind performing this analysis is to determine displacements, stresses, strain, deformation etc, under static loading conditions. Both linear and nonlinear static analyses can be performed in ANSYS using Static Structural Analysis. Non linearity can include plasticity, stress stiffening, large deflection, large strain, hyper-elasticity, contact surfaces, and creep.

NOTE: This article will not concentrate on Non Linear type of Structural Analysis

Modal Analysis - modal analysis is a technique used to determine the vibration characteristics of structures and it is used to find the natural frequencies and mode shapes of a structure.

Harmonic Analysis - A technique to determine the steady state response of a structure to sinusoidal (harmonic) loads of known frequency. In this type of analysis the input data is harmonic loads such as forces, pressures, and imposed displacements of known magnitude and frequency(Forces and displacements can be in-phase or out-of phase). The output of harmonic analysis is harmonic displacements at each Degree of Freedom(DOF), usually out of phase with the applied loads and also other derived quantities, such as stresses and strains.

Transient Dynamic Analysis -Used to determine the response of a structure to arbitrarily time-varying loads. All non-linearity mentioned under Static Analysis above are allowed for consideration while performing this Analysis.

Random vibration Analysis -An extension of the modal analysis, used to calculate stresses and strains due to a response random vibrations or spectrums. This is also known as Spectrum Analysis in ANSYS, The amplitudes at these frequencies vary randomly with time.We need some way of describing and quantifying this excitation and thus we need to perform this analysis.

Buckling Analysis - Used to calculate the buckling loads and determine the buckling mode shape. Both linear (eigenvalue) buckling and nonlinear buckling analyses are possible.

Explicit Dynamic Analysis - Explicit dynamic analysis is used to calculate fast solutions for large deformation dynamics and complex contact problems. A typical example for this type of analysis would be car crash test.

I have given a short description about all the seven types of structural analysis, with this we come to the end of our series " Understanding FEA Analysis in Less than 10 minutes". Structural Analysis is a very vast topic and has many classifications and sub classifications. I need to write at least more than 5 articles to explain about this particular type of analysis, so I need to start a new series of articles just for structural analysis alone. I will be starting to write a new series in the near future, as far as this series is concerned I am finishing it with this article. Hope you enjoyed reading my article. Please feel free to share your thoughts.