Tutorial 1: Linear Static Analysis of a Crane

In this tutorial you will learn to quickly set up a basic structural simulation of a crane and conduct stress analysis using SimScale.

Figure 1: Post-processing contours on a crane structure.

The tutorial project “Tutorial 1: Linear Static Analysis of a Crane” has been imported and is open in your SimScale Workbench.

1. Select the Analysis Type and Create Simulation

Figure 2 demonstrates the current layout of your screen. This is the Workbench and the geometry is ready for the simulation.

To create a new simulation, click on the ‘Create Simulation’ button.

Figure 2: SimScale Workbench view. Click **‘Create Simulation’** to begin.

This will open up the Analysis type library. Select ‘Static’ as the analysis type and click ‘Create Simulation’.

static analysis — Figure 3: Analysis type library. Select **‘Static’** to perform stress analysis.

A new Simulation tree will automatically be generated on the left side of your Workbench, containing all parameters and settings required to start the simulation.

Figure 4: Simulation tree consists of simulation steps to be completed before a simulation run.

2. Set Up the Simulation

A successful simulation setup means a complete and accurate definition of the physics defined within the simulation tree. We need to define the following settings: Direction of gravity, Material of the crane and Boundary conditions.

2.1 Direction of Gravity

To define and modify the direction of gravity, click on ‘Model’.

Figure 5: Defining gravity under *Model*

This will open up the settings panel for Model. In this case, gravity is acting in the negative y-direction. Add ‘9.81’ m/s as the magnitude and e_y as ‘-1’ to indicate gravity in the negative-y direction.

2.2 Define a Material

To assign a material to your model, click on the ‘+’ button next to Materials in the simulation tree.

Figure 6: First step to assigning a material in SimScale

The Material library will open containing pre-defined materials. Scroll down to select ‘Steel’ and click ‘Apply’.

The material will automatically be assigned to the crane.

Figure 8: Steel material assigned to the crane model

Note

The color blue indicates that the material has been assigned.

2.3 Boundary Conditions

Two boundary conditions, fixed support and force, need to be assigned to the crane.

Figure 9: Boundary conditions overview for this simulation

A. Fixed Support

To create a new boundary condition, click on the ‘+’ button next to Boundary conditions in the simulation tree. Select ‘Fixed Support’ from the list.

Figure 10: Boundary condition list for a linear static simulation

After that, a dialog box of the fixed support boundary condition will show up. Here, you will only need to assign the fixed support faces.

Figure 11: Fixed support boundary condition.

B. Force

Repeat the process and add another boundary condition by clicking on the ‘+’ button next to Boundary conditions. Select ‘Force’.

Figure 12: Force boundary condition, taking into account the orientation cube.

We will define our force to be -1e5 N in the y-direction, observing the orientation cube.

3. Mesh

To create the mesh, we will use the standard algorithm, which is automated and delivers good results for most geometries.

No changes in the default settings are needed. For linear static simulations, SimScale creates 2nd order meshes by default, which increases the accuracy of the analysis.

The resulting mesh looks like this:

4. Start the Simulation

You can start a simulation run by clicking on the ‘+ button’ next to Simulation runs.

Figure 15: Steps to start a new simulation run.

At this point, you will be shown a dialog box containing an estimate of the computing resource that will be spent to run your simulation. You can proceed by pressing ‘Start’.

Once the simulation run is finished, the status will be changed to Finished in the run settings panel.

finished run simscale — Figure 16: Example of a finished run

5. Post-Processing

After the simulation run has finished computing, you can access the results by one of two methods:

access simscale postprocessor — Figure 17: The two ways to access the online post-processor in SimScale

When you have been directed to the post-processor, you can start analyzing your results. For this tutorial, we will show the von Mises stress and the deformation of the crane.

To analyze the von Mises stress on the crane structure, make sure that ‘von Mises Stress’ is defined under Parts Color:

Figure 18: Von Mises stress distribution in the crane due to the applied loads

It can be seen that the highest stress levels occur close to the free end of the crane, where the force boundary condition is applied. There is also a high-stress region next to the top fixed support face.

Since deformation is also important in stress analysis, we can visualize both the von Mises stress and displacement at the same time. The displacement settings can be changed under the Displacement filter:

Figure 18: Steps to create the displacement plot, used to visualize the deformed shape of the crane

Since the displacements of the crane are very small, it’s possible to scale them up to obtain a better visualization. In the image above, the displacements have a Scaling factor of ’50’.

Now, to see the actual displacement values, we can also adjust the Parts Color to ‘Displacement Magnitude’:

Figure 19: Location of the Scaling factor parameter in the Filters panel

As expected, the free end of the crane undergoes the largest deformations, based on the initial position. The total maximum displacement due to the weight of the structure and the applied force is roughly 4 millimeters in this scenario.

Congratulations! You just finished your first Stress Analysis simulation on SimScale!

Have a look at the finished project

Find more tutorials on our website: SimScale Tutorials and User Guide