AM-A offers a complete mechanical design and certification service. We can provide everything from classical stress analysis computations to complex FEA models.
Capabilities
- AS-4600 Cold formed steel structures – Design and certification
- Carbon and glass fibre repairs and reinforcements
- Mechanical Engineering Certifications (REPQ, NER, CPEng)
- Complex system design and analysis
- Machine and vehicle component engineering and design
- Pressure vessel design and analysis – ASME BPVC Section VIII
- Full 3D and 2D CAD documentation
Case study: Marine bracket optimisation
Original design
The original design was suffering from fatigue failure at the stress concentration. The client asked AM-A what could be done to find a more durable solution. Without changing material and manufacture method.
The original design was completed using engineering intuition as to what the optimal shape would be. As you can see below a fairly traditional design was produced.
The design had a peak stress of 60MPa under the serviceability loads.
Generative design
A design space was defined by clearance requirements to existing structure. A generative shape analysis was run to find the optimal load path. The advantage of using generative shape analysis is that it defines a load-path for the engineer that may not be immediately obvious and removes the prejudices of preconceived solutions.
Optimised design
The output of the generative shape analysis isn’t manufacture friendly. So the CAD is cleaned up and a final FEA is run to verify the design.
Whilst quite odd in shape and definitely not the intuitive solution. The peak stress is now 30MPa. A reduction of 50%. The mass of the bracket has also been reduced by 20%. For similar manufacturing approach the client saved on raw material cost and improved fatigue life by several orders of magnitude.