I am new to solid work, and would like help on how to analyse a 2m steel cable with a point load in the middle. basically i would like to know how much tension there will be in the cable once the point load is applied. Thanks in advance.
I am new to solid work, and would like help on how to analyse a 2m steel cable with a point load in the middle. basically i would like to know how much tension there will be in the cable once the point load is applied. Thanks in advance.
are you saying that your question is "how do i add pretension" before you apply your load?
the analysis as you described it is pretty straight forward, fix both ends of the wire, add your point load, run
if you need to pretension, you'll need to use nonlinear to add the pretension first.
then measuring "tension" will be based on the stresses in the wire
I'm not really sure how'd you define them. In Eulerian or Timoshenko beam theory, the shear stress (VQ/It) arises because it is assumed that "layers" of the beam cannot slip relative to each other, but this is not entirely the case with a steel cable. If you compared the stiffness of several layers of plywood that are not glued together against the same number of layers of the same plywood that are glued together, the glued plywood will be stiffer because the glued interface allows the transfer of shear loads. In fact, the more I think about it, the more I think that a beam model would be a poor choice.
You might get a more realistic model of a cable by using a discrete number of mass and spring elements, but it'd be rather time consuming to do (I'm not sure if SW can do it either, but I'm not an expert with it so I'll let someone else answer that).
If you don't mind me asking, why are you trying to simulate this? As I said before, this is an easy hand calculation to do; using the FEM to do this is overkill (and will potentially give you very inaccurate results if you don't model it correctly).
do you have simulation premium?
i would start with just getting the non tensioned version to work the way you want
if you have simulation premium, before you add your load you can pull to create tension
if you don't have simulation premium you might be able to do something with compressing a part with a temperature to generate the preload, btu then it would be applied at the same time as the tension, that is probably ok for your static case
Jared, thanks very much again for reply, i do have solidworks premium at my work place, can you please give me a tip on how you think i can best simulate it as i am new to simulation. like what study i should chosee static or non-linear? i notice non-linear also have two types dynamic and 2d? and also what sort of fixtures i should put? thanks
Hello Jared, my concern is that solidworks simulation doesnt have a cable element, from my understanding the only way to simulate this analysis on solidworks is to define a cable as a solid with similar properties to cable. this might give me similar results but wont help me difine the geometry of the cable. for example the real cable will sag under its own weight as a pre-condition and then will probable sag further under the 1.5kN load. how do you simulate the sag under its own weight? i will be more confident of doing this analysis if the horizontal members were steel rods and not cable as i am not sure if solidworks simulation can analysis cable? in the end for this structure to work i have to make sure the cables doesnt deflect more than 25mm under the load. thanks
Saqib,
Because the cable is made of separate wires wound in a spiral it is more flexible than a similarly sized piece of steel. You need to estimate how it will react to the stresses being applied to it. If you have access to an Instron type of tester, you could measure the change in length under tension to get an equivalent Young's Modulus. You could measure the deflection under gravity in your picture and come up with another equivalent Young's Modulus. If they are pretty close to the same, you could have a little faith in your FEA.
Jerry S.
You could probably do this with a beam element and large-displacement formulation, but you need to define cross-section properties for it, which will be difficult for a steel cable (given the individual strands in it). However, it'd be much easier to do this with Newton's 2nd Law and some simple calculus.