Trouble with Cosmosworks analysis, Tim you're the man.

Tim,

I'm having a hard time analyzing my rotor hats. I put the restraints on the inside faces of the 4 lug holes.

I put the loads on the holes where the rotor mounts to the hat. What I can't figure out is how to make the loads in the direction of the rotation of the rotor hat. Right now they all just explode out in every direction.

I was thinking that maybe no restraints are necessary and that i should force the lug holes one direction of rotation and the rotor mount holes the other in order to see the weak spots.

Do you have any advice?

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Michael LeCompte

If you're just using the cosmos that's embedded in SW then you have to create 4 new reference planes. That will allow you to create a force normal to the reference plane acting on the bolt hole. That's still a horribly simplified model though.

Have you done any classical verification? You know, with a pencil paper and a calculator... That was the one thing they drilled into our heads when I was taught FEA in school. If you can't get even a first order hand calculation to agree with the model then it's all junk. Just tweaking the model and making all the red disappear doesn't make it right.

And some more leading questions:

--if the center of the rotor hat is clamped between a thick steel spindle face and a really thick wheel mounting face can we assume that it is basically fixed?

--if the brake rotor is attached to the hat with a bolt does it act on the entire surface of the thru hole or on just 1/4 to 1/3 of the face it is actually being pressed against?

(Here is a nice trick for forcing the simplified cosmosworks to do what you want it to. Where you would want to put a surface interaction alter your model by extruding a really thin 0.0001" boss that matches the other surface. Then you have something that the program can recognize to add your force or constraint to.)

yeah, same answer.
extrude a small " force pad" to give a surface to act on.

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"I put the hurt on dirt" - adam crane
http://CraneRallyCrew.com
corolla gt-s "Patches"
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