Feasibility of Internally Reinforced Thin-Walled Beams for Industrial Applications

Abstract

In this work, several types of reinforcement geometries of hollow-box beams for industrial applications are compared. A novel type of sandwich beams under bending and torsion uncoupled loadings is proposed as the best solution of all those that were studied. For the comparative analysis of the solutions, the models are modelled by the Finite Element Method (FEM) using the commercial software ANSYS Mechanical APDL. The feasibility of the novel beams was assessed by comparing the stiffness behavior of the beams with simple hollow-box beams in terms of deflection. An efficiency parameter was defined in order to determine the relative difference in terms of deflection. It is found that the novel geometries represent a great improvement under bending loadings, better than under torsion loadings. Nevertheless, for bending and torsion combined loadings, if bending stresses are predominant, the beams can still be interesting for some applications, mainly those with mobile parts.

Experimental Validation of a Novel Thin-Walled Beam Prototype

“…• It was possible to manufacture the thin-walled beam prototype presented in this paper. All the dimensions were reduced to half of those considered in previous works, such as in [3], included the thickness. However, in this work, the numerical model has the same dimensions as the prototype, in order for the comparison to be possible.…”

“…There is the need of improving rigidity to make possible the correct machine operation without undesired vibrations that can ultimately lead to failure [1,2]. Having these considerations in mind, effective geometries have already been studied and similar geometries to https://doi.org/10.2478/mme-2018-0001 the prototype of this work were tested for feasibility [3]. Parameters that allowed effectiveness comparison between different kinds of all-metal sandwich beams were already established [4,5].…”

Sensitivity Analysis of Internally Reinforced Thin-Walled Hollow-Box Beams Subjected to Uncoupled Bending and Torsion

“…The finite element method (FEM) model of those whose feasibility was already studied in [4,5] was used here for the sensitivity analysis. The model was based on sandwich geometries whose effectiveness was assessed earlier in [14][15][16] and is shown in Figure 3.…”

“…Silva and Meireles presented the results of an example of 24 optimized beams under uncoupled bending and torsion loadings [3]. The same authors have performed a feasibility analysis of similar beams, which shows that the studied beams are highly effective under bending loadings [4,5]. Several articles were found in the literature regarding similar beams, manufactured and experimentally tested.…”

“…Points used to calculate displacements on sensitivity analysis and on the calculation of the objective function on optimization procedure[3][4][5] …”