Dynam(o)ite your Design for Engineers – part 2

It is time for another part of “Dynam(o)ite your Design for Engineers”. In this episode, the engineer is not sure yet about the dimensions of his geometry. Of course, the experienced engineers have special empiric rules to define the geometrical dimensions of basic structures. But in this case, the engineer wants to push it a step further and wants to see the influence of geometrical changes to the results of his simulation.

Starring in this episode:

• The engineer that always wants to push it further (sounds familiar to me)
• Autodesk Robot Structural Analysis Professional (aka RSA)
• Autodesk Dynamo

It all starts with a simple beam on two fixed supports, with a uniform load of let’s say 2,5 kN/m on top of it. Let’s see what the influence of the length of that beam is on the maximal bending stress in the beam.

So, the video below explains how this can be achieved with Dynamo and RSA. The intention is to have a visual representation of the stresses for a beam length varying between 1 and 15 m.

One: hey, just use formulas in MS Excel, dude…

Me: Be patient my friend, let’s start with a simple principle. If this works out fine, than we can make a next episode and push it even harder.

Special thanks to Emmanuel Weyerman and Dimitar Venkov.

To be continued…

Next time in “Dynam(o)ite your Design for Engineers”: The engineer wants to apply this principle to a more complex project, and use the results to make his design decisions. Structural Optimization may be looming around the corner…

Datasets for this episode can be downloaded here.