All structures contain flaws to some extent, for example as a result of: the manufacturing process, the fabrication, localised in-service damage. The design life of many mechanical components depends upon their ability to resist the excessive growth of these cracks. Designers use Stress Intensity Factors to describe the complex stress patterns around cracks, and to determine the design life of a component.
Fracture mechanics is essentially the study of cracked bodies under load. It tries to answer four main questions:
* Will the crack grow?
* Will it grow in an unstable fast or stable slow manner?
* If growth is stable, at what rate will it grow?
* To what size can the crack grow before becoming stable.
The old way of computing Stress Intensity data for structures relied on either handbooks or complex models with special elements and specially refined meshes near the crack. Other recently developed methods simplify the mesh near the crack but are restric ted to very simple crack geometries and loadings.
BEASY removes all these restrictions and allows structural integrity studies of multiple cracks of any shape and with arbitrary loading and model geometry.
BEASY not only provides Stress Intensity Factor data, it also predicts how cracks will grow and their impact on the performance of the structure.
BEASY provides a powerful and precise solution for the designer.
IRIX version compatibility: 5.3, 6.2
Sales Manager
Computational Mechanics Beasy
Ashurst Lodge, Ashurst
Southampton, Hants, SO40 7AA
UK
44-1703-293223
44-1703-292853 (fax)
sales@beasy.com
For applications in related solution areas, see the following indices:
Manufacturing Simulation & Optimization, the developer index for Computational Mechanics Beasy
and the product category index for Mechanical CAD/Mechanical CAM.