Cosmos works 5.0 shell assembly

[peyto]

Hi,
Im trying to run a static fea analysis on a bicycle frame using shells as the tubing which is quite thinwall (0.4mm-0.9mm). Cosmos apparently cant mesh multiple shells (ie the tubes in the frame) in an assembly,it can only shell mesh individual parts. It can only mesh solids elements in assembly mode. I tried using solids, but as expected the mesh failed i guess due to the huge number of solid elements required . Any ideas, advice on how to proceed would be helpful . Is Mechanica more capable of this type of analysis?
thanks,
Peyto

 

[macPT]

As far as I can remember, V5.0 was not very powerful with assemblies. If you want to do FEA in assemblies it's better to use V6.0 or latter (for example, you can define the constraints between touching faces: bonded, free, node to node, with friction). I think the solvers have been improved, also, in latter versions than V5.0.

Regards

 

[dsi]

If you are using tubing, you should probably be using 2D pipe elements, but they are not available in Cosmos/Works. We only use Cosmos/Works for simple parts. For anything involving more complex designs, we use Cosmos/M. DimensionalSolutions@Core.com
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[peyto]

thanks for the replys so far.
dsi, I cant use 2d pipe elements as some of the tubing is not all round (aero shaped), also I would like to analyze the effect of gusseting and fillet size.
It sounds like I need some more powerful software (and probably more computer power to run it).