Finite Element Analysis Project

This is a project I just finished for my ENGR 350: Engineering Mechanics of Materials class.  Only one class got the joy of working with ABAQUS and that was the Engineering Scholars section which I am honored to be a part of.
For this project we used a student version of ABAQUS to solve two different problems.  The class of 25 worked individually on this.

Here is a picture of the actual assignment sheet we were given.  The writing on it are my notes as to what I have to solve, as well as conversions to get all the units the same so I could solve the problem.

On problem one we were given a sketch of a certian industrial part with boundary conditions.  We had to solve this heat conduction problem using ABAQUS and plot the contours of the temperature and heat fluxes in the component.

To build the first model I had to buid two seperate parts because each one was slightly different with different conditions.  Shown below is the top half of the part.

After creating that part I produced the bottom half as seen below:

At this point I worked on assembling the two parts, adding the required conditions, meshing the parts and solving the problems.  This is my first part, as you can see the mesh is the same thoughout.

The instructor wanted us to refine our meshes and focus more on the area around the circle since that is what we want to get results from for the most part.

Here is the view of the part showing the nodal temperature

The following two pictures are what I turned in as my project for question one.  The first picture shows the Heat Flux vector at integration points and the second shows the Nodal temperature at the nodes.

Now onto question two.
For question two we had to use ABAQUS to calculate the stress concentration factor for a plate with a hole loaded in tension.

This first picture shows my part after I drew it and sectioned it to just one quarter.

Here I added a mesh

Here I refined the mesh to focus on the area that will have high stress

This picture shows the deformed shape after a load has been applied and then plotted.

Here is the final graph that I turned in.  I also had to calculate the stress concentration factor using ABAQUS as well as using the formulas for solving the stress concentration factor and then seeing how accurate my ABAQUS work was.

In the end my ABAQUS results were very close to the correct results.  I was 99.89% accurate which is quite impressive.  When looking back at my older mesh that was not refined, it was not nearly as accurate so I believe that if I keep working with my mesh and adding more nodes I would be able to get very close to the correct value.

All in all this was a very fun and stressful project and gave a good introduction into Finite Element software and how to use it as well as learn what all it can do.

SolidWorks Key Chain Design Project

The idea behind this project was to introduce us to solidworks and 3D printing by designing a key chain.  For this Chevy Key Chain, I worked on my own to create a key chain I would want to use.  By doing this it made my job and the learning of solid works a lot more enjoyable.

Now I will talk a little about my Key Chain:

1. To begin with we designed the product in Solid Works:

I started with this picture and based my solid works drawing off of it:

To get to the final product of this: This picture is my Final rendered solid works drawing of my key chain before printing. This is where I added material properties, what I would be making it out of and also the color sequence.  As you can tell the object will be polished aluminum with a painted yellow / gold finish on the emblem to help it stand out.

I am very happy with how it turned out during the rendering process.

The final overall measurements for this key chain are as follows:
Chevy Emblem:
Length: 2.500"
Width: 0.800"
Thickness: 0.500"

To take into account the portion where the key rings hook on, the total width becomes roughly 1.00"

Now I will show pictures of my key chain in solid works with some information as to what I was doing.

To begin with here are a few views of the solid works window with my project:

 

 

 

 

 

Here are some of my Dimensions as seen in solid works when I go to edit the drawing:

 

For this one, when I get more time I will be cleaning up my measurements so it is not so confusing or messy.

Lastly here is the product after I added material properties and color:

And one more Final rendered picture of my product.

2. Second we Printed our key chain using a 3D Printer so we could produce a Rapid Prototype.
The Printer I used is the one that the University of Idaho has which is a Dimension bst 1200 a rougly $30,000 machine that is quite amazing.  More information on it can be found here: http://www.dimensionprinting.com/3d-printers/3d-printing-bst.aspx

Here are a few pictures of the actual machine I used that the Mechanical Engineering Department and the University of Idaho has.

Here are a few views while the machine was printing mine as well as a couple other students key chain projects.  You can see my Chevy one, its the second one back on the left side.

Here you can see the finished key chains stuck to the tray after removal, as well as a few views of mine.

Lastly for the plastic model portion of my project, here are a few pictures after I got the structure material off and was left with my own product.

Thank You for your Time.


(more information will be added as my progress on this project evolves.  My future hopes are to make an aluminum model of this using a CNC Mill.  Thank you for your patience.)

Temperature Measurement Assignment

Step One:
Because much of what we do we have to know how to use computers, or program them to do what we need them to do such as in this case; recourd our results.  Because of how everything is becoming more computer involved, we need to be fluent in knowing basic knowledge on computer programming.

Step Two:
Start with a simple program and work your way up to getting the program made that does what you need it to do.  This way you save time by not struggling with a difficult problem to start with.  We also do a lot of background research so we dont have to learn everything from scratch and re-invent the wheel.

Step Three:
The Arduino Code
/* ---------------------------------------------------------
* | Arduino Experimentation Kit Example Code |
* | CIRC-10 .: Temperature :. (TMP36 Temperature Sensor) |
* ---------------------------------------------------------
*
* A simple program to output the current temperature to the IDE's debug window
*
* For more details on this circuit: http://tinyurl.com/c89tvd
*/

//TMP36 Pin Variables
int temperaturePin = 0; //the analog pin the TMP36's Vout (sense) pin is connected to
//the resolution is 10 mV / degree centigrade
//(500 mV offset) to make negative temperatures an option

/*
* setup() - this function runs once when you turn your Arduino on
* We initialize the serial connection with the computer
*/
void setup()
{
Serial.begin(9600); //Start the serial connection with the copmuter
//to view the result open the serial monitor
//last button beneath the file bar (looks like a box with an antenae)
}

void loop() // run over and over again
{
float temperature = getVoltage(temperaturePin); //getting the voltage reading from the tem
//perature sensor
temperature = (temperature - .5) * 100; //converting from 10 mv per degree wit 500
// mV offset
//to degrees ((volatge - 500mV) times 100)
Serial.println(temperature); //printing the result
delay(1000); //waiting a second
}

/*
* getVoltage() - returns the voltage on the analog input defined by
* pin
*/
float getVoltage(int pin){
return (analogRead(pin) * .004882814); //converting from a 0 to 1023 digital range
// to 0 to 5 volts (each 1 reading equals ~ 5 milliv
//olts
}

Here is a code that I found that seemed to work better and was simple to work with.  You can find it below or on this site: http://myelectronicsdiary.wordpress.com/2012/03/01/a-simple-arduino-based-temperature-logger-system/

float tempC;

int Sensor = 0;

void setup()

{

Serial.begin(9600); //opens serial port, sets data rate to 9600 bps

}

void loop()

{

float val = analogRead(Sensor); //read the value from the sensor

tempC = (5.0 * val * 100.0)/1024.0; //convert the analog data to temperature

Serial.print("Temperature = ");

Serial.print((byte)tempC); //send the data to the computer

Serial.println("C");

delay(1000); //wait one second before sending new data

}

The Teperatures I found are as follows:

Temperature = 25C
Temperature = 24C
Temperature = 26C
Temperature = 25C
Temperature = 27C
Temperature = 27C
Temperature = 29C
Temperature = 30C
Temperature = 30C
Temperature = 33C
Temperature = 34C
Temperature = 35C
Temperature = 38C
Temperature = 38C
Temperature = 39C
Temperature = 40C
Temperature = 43C
Temperature = 44C
Temperature = 44C
Temperature = 48C
Temperature = 50C


Step Four:
I feel that the best part of this temperature recording code is that it converts the temperature results to celsius which is a universal reading that many of us know.  Such as my readings at the begining are around room temperature which in measurements most of us would understand: 25C = 77 fahrenheit. Then the temps began to raise as I heated the piece of aluminum. I stopped when I reached 50C which is close to 122 fahrenheit.

Step Five:
I feel that my strengths in the project was researching more about recording temperature using the arduino because I was able to find a code that I understood better than the one provided which also worked just fine.  My future improvements would be to set up the code to give the results in Fahrenheit as well since many people here can relate to those results more so that the ones in Celsius.  I feel that this code can come in handy for a lot of things and it is a valuable skill to learn how to set this up.

Electric Bike Lift Kit Project

The idea behind this project was to create a kit for a model that future engineering students could use in lab to help them learn many important engineering concepts.

This project was done during a roughly 2 week time span in a group of 4 including myself.

More on this project is explained in the video:

LED Light Project

The Goal of this project was to create a product that involves a battery, one or more LEDs, and an Arduino that controls the LEDs.

This project was done in roughly 2 weeks in a group of 2 including myself.

In my project we decided to do a turn signal and break light system for bikes. As shown below.

This is a video explaining the project:

Here are two videos of our prototype:

At a later time when I learn to add documents I will add the specifications as well as the arduino code for this project.