Hi all,

I'm trying to perform a FEM simulation of a chain and I'm comparing results with physical testing.

Physical testing occurs on the chain you see in the following picture:

Test occurs with an hydraulic powered machine, and two pins are inserted in the holes you see in the picture. One pin is kept fixed, while the other pin is pulled.

The load that breaks the chain is 100000 N.

Most of the components are assembled with shrink fit, therefore I'm simulating that condition with global bonded contact:

The only parts where I'm applying a different condition are those you see in the picture, where I'm applying a no penetration condition (a bonded condition doesn't work because surfaces touch only on one line):

Breaking component in the inner link of the chain you see in the following picture:

In the next picture I'm showing where exactly it breaks:

In my simulation I'm keeping fixed the face of the hole where the fixed pin is in, while I'm pulling with a force the other hole where the pulled pin is in. I've also tried using a displacement instead of a force, but my problem is that I'm not getting realistic results:

Just by using a 30000 N force or equivalent displacement, rhere are unreasonable high stresses on parts that have a 650 Mpa Yield stress and that are not supposed to break:

I even had to insert some artificial fillets in order to avoid stress concentrations on edges.

I tried to model this chain in a Similar way to the chain you find in the SolidWorks Simulation training manual, but I'm not getting realistic results either:

Any suggestions on how to get correct results ?

I'm attaching the chain model TEST_SIMULATION_2011.SLDASM with a few studies I tried to setup.

Thanks,

Alessandro