SolidWorks Simulation

Solidworks Simulation Goals

The overall goal of Solidworks Simulation was to reduce assembly times when designing AEV models, address weight problems, and conduct a digital motion study for the group’s AEV designs.

Problems Addressed

One of the early issues the group faced in the labs was Assembling and disassembling the AEV in a small-time frame. Since the group wanted to build multiple designs and code its movement, the one-hour time frame was not enough to accomplish this. The group had to meet multiple times a week to make up unfinished labs due to the enormous amount of time allocated to prototyping designs and recovering parts.

Another issue with designing the AEV was lack of comparative data among several designs. The team’s new goal was to reduce the AEV’s weight, increase stability, and consume the least amount of power. If assembling and disassembling of the AEV took less time, perhaps the team would have more time to conduct comparative data studies.

Enter Solidworks simulations where digital analysis of designs supposedly takes less time and conducts design studies in a minimal amount of time. However, this hypothesis should be tested. So, the group decided that perhaps Solidworks simulation could help reduce assembling times and provide useful analysis on AEV model designs which could help solve these problems.

Advantages:

  1. Faster than physical assembly
  2. Less expensive than buying parts
  3. Easy to prototype
  4. Takes less time to conduct comparative data studies

 

Limitations:

  1. Hard to determine distance traveled
  2. Takes practice to understand and utilize the different modes of studies
  3. Motion data is not accurate in a real-world scenario

Mass Study

The original AEV design weighted 1.21 pounds, had a volume of 10.32 cubic inches and had a surface area of 226.81 square inches. The new design’s mass properties after conducting the mass study are given below. The AEV lost 0.89 pounds after the mass study. The volume and surface area also decreased. Volume went down by 2.6 cubic inches and the surface area decreased by 28.61 square inches.

Errors:

Since the materials available on Solidworks are not exact materials present in the AEV, the weight difference is about 9% when comparing Solidworks design’s mass to actual AEV’s mass.

Using Materials Study

Mass properties of Own design study after Mass Study

Configuration: Default

Coordinate system: — default —

 

Mass = 0.32 pounds

 

Volume = 7.72 cubic inches

 

Surface area = 197.20 square inches

 

Center of mass: (Inches)

X = 2.12

Y = 5.02

Z = 6.22

 

Motion Study

After the mass study, the team conducted motion study in Solidworks. This study was much more challenging since the user interface for motion study is not well optimized. Also, many hours of practice are required to be proficient with this study. The animation conducted by Solidworks allocates an enormous amount of computer’s graphics memory which was hard to run in many of the computers the group performed the study on. However, the video produced was smooth after it was uploaded so the latency was only temporary. The video of the motion study is provided below.

Own design study-19uj5f5

Motion Study errors: Since the motion study’s data does not account for friction, or air resistance, the data is not helpful. The animation of the design is a more effective representation of the AEV than the data produced by it.

One of the key takeaways for AEV assembly was to use the placement of the Arduino as a constraint for AEV designs to produce the least amount of interferences and reduce the combinations of designs. Without using Arduino’s placement as a constraint, there were 313 interferences and 212 combinations of designs. However, once the Arduino was placed, the interferences went down to 20, which were part of the Arduino. The number of design combinations also decreased to 6 from the previous 212.

Progress report answers

  1. The motion studies were used to test whether some parts could fit and how they could move in relation to another object.
  2. Creating Solidworks simulation requires several hours of practice since the User Interface is not well optimized. The animation was not smooth on any of the computer I ran the simulation on.

 

Citations:

Materials costs: http://epsilonindustries.com/pricing/cost-of-plastic-part-production/

Solidworks Error: https://www.solidsolutions.co.uk/Blog/2017/10/So-how-accurate-is-SOLIDWORKS-Flow-Simulation/#.WpYflajwY2w: