I am working on studying a pivoting door. The door is made of 1/2" thick aluminum plates with low carbon steel ribs bolted to it. There are 5 ribs keyed to the shaft and held in place with setscrews. There are two crank arm weldments (one on each end) mounted on the shaft in a similar manner. There are also two large counterweights (one on each end of the shaft) also keyed with setscrews. The counterweights are mounted outboard of the outermost bearing (cantilevered). The door itself is cantilevered and during operation will be supported only by 4 pillow block bearings. I want to analyze the deflection in the door since it will be largely unsupported. We know it will sag in the middle, but how much? I am also interested in the shaft to verify sizing and material. For the first study I used split lines to create the bearing surfaces. I then added bearing supports to those surfaces. I fixed the clevis pin hole in the crank arm where the hydraulic cylinders will attach. I used global bonded contact. The study resulted in a max stress of about 26K psi concentrated on the corner of the keyway in the crank arm.  I then decided to add no penetration to the shaft and keyway surfaces that interface with the crank arm and reran the study. Now the max stress is 582k psi located in the crank arm weldment. So my question is when is it appropriate to use bonded versus non contact? Nothing will be welded to the shaft so I feel like bonded isn't exactly representative, but 582K psi seems very unrealistic too.

Also, as I stated above the door panel is a bolted construction, but I am using bonded here as well. Is bonded going to make the door seem much more rigid than it is? Is this something where I need to added bolted connects at every bolt location to get realistic results?

Regards,

Aaron