Earthmoving - Fixture question

[RF-ME]

Hi,

I am working on a piece of earthmoving equipment, and have a general question to put out there regarding fixtures.

for context think of the machine as a box grader. the area of interest is the supporting cutting edge, which is supported by evenly spaced spars.

(

https://www.google.com/search?sca_e...GHesmAbwQtKgLegQIFhAB&biw=1920&bih=919&dpr=1)

there are two ways I can think to set this simulation up.

the first
Apply a fixture to the drawbar, and apply the load to the machines cutting edge.
The issue I see here is that the load will be applied evenly across the cutting edge, but this doesn't account for the material having some stiffness and being deformable. my concern is that it will show artificially high loads between the spars.

The second,

apply the load to the drawbar (i.e. the force exerted by a tractor pulling the implement) and use an elastic support fixture to attempt to account for the soil deforming as its being cut.


my challenge here, that I would like to throw out for comment/ideas, is if I were to use the second method, what value should I use for the elastic support. one idea was to look at the bearing strength and use that as an approximation.
Another thought entirely was to use a virtual wall.


interesting to hear peoples thoughts.

 

[FEA way]

Interesting case. There is a considerable amount of literature on the topic of soil-tool interaction. You might be able to estimate the forces acting on the tool in your case. Then you would just have to apply them to the cutting edge and fix the other side. That might be the best approach.

 

[RF-ME]

appreciate the response, I will do some more research into soil/tool interaction to see if I can find some data. we actually ended up estimating a tool load, so is nice to hear there is some consensus in the approach.

cheers