YouTube videos about Mecway

prop_design

Hi,

I don't think I announced this here but I have a bunch of YouTube videos that highlight Mecway. They are geared towards propellers, fans, and composites.

I just uploaded four new videos today. Two cover advanced composite analysis with Mecway. If you have any questions or would like the actual model files, let me know here.

Victor was a tremendous help. I must have sent him 100s of emails over the last six months. Neither one of us was sure you could do the stuff I show. After lots of questions, a ton of experiments, head pounding, etc... I found you could do quite a lot with Mecway and Calculix. It was also really easy, once you knew what to do. So that is what the screencasts are for. Trying to show people what to do.

Anthony

The channel is located here: EDIT: See post below for updated link

Victor

Great work Anthony. The forum somehow breaks Youtube links but maybe this will work

PROP_DESIGN Screencasts: https://youtube.com/channel/UCj7CdqPJOXVV56J1m8zGbPw



Mecway's channel also has howto videos from various people collected together.

Mecway channel: https://youtube.com/channel/UC8tXqfFUUYNb1kv5X4GLi3w

prop_design

Thanks Victor,

I'm new to YouTube and social media. So I don't know how to do a lot of things. Feel free to link to my channel if you want or can. I have to re-record the last to videos I did. One of them is the third attempt. Just having software problems. So two more will be posted soon.

mike262

hi these are awesome!
Im looking for info on analyzing a composite wing for a light aircraft using mecway. im also looking for info on the best way to model cored panels with honeycomb core and carbon facesheets. I guess carbon propellers are just more complicated wings really! which is the best video for this stuff?
cheers
Michael

prop_design

thanks mike. i actually can't remember what is in any given video at this point. but i know the advanced composite screencast has a bit more info than the others. however, some of the earlier ones have some useful info. for what you are doing, i don't have too much in there. i did play with laminates but found it to be not so great. i went with a quasi-isotropic orthotropic material instead. one that i could find fatigue failure data for. it was the only material i could find with fatigue data. that's the most important failure criteria for me. wings are actually a lot harder to do than propellers. propellers are very small so you can't cram a whole lot of crazy stuff inside. wind turbine blades are closer to wings than propellers. but you may find all the screencasts helpful to get started. it took me a long time to figure out how to do composites. victor wasn't even sure if i could do what i was trying to. i sent him tons of emails and just kept pounding on the software until i achieved some success. i think you can do 'some' composite work in mecway. but i don't think it can do everything. there are other tools out there that can handle draping for instance, that come with material libraries, that have lots of failure criteria, and that have more efficient solution techniques. my opinion is mecway is in the early stages of composite capability. but it could use some more work in that area.

mike262

I dont think what im trying to do is that complicated i guess. im mainly interested in static analysis and working out the failure loads and making sure the wing is not excessively heavy (i have weight data on similar wings).... I'm not really interested in any complicated post failure analysis. im using high safety factors with limit loads of 10g and a safety factor of 2. I'll go through the videos thanks for posting them!

prop_design

one thing you could do on the geometry side of things is build the assembly in cad. just use aluminum for all the material properties. that way you can get a feel for the import, contact setup, solving etc. then figure out how to get them switched over to composites. victor and others might have some ideas too. i'm still learning mecway myself. so i'm by no means an expert.

Hedgepeth

This YT channel got some really useful content, thanks a lot!

prop_design

thanks hedgepeth, glad they were helpful

prop_design

I updated most of the screencasts recently. Mecway v13 beta was used.

prop_design

I deleted the YouTube channel today. It's a lot of work to make the videos and the utilization of them didn't justify the time needed to create them. They become obsolete with time and require re-creating them over and over as well. So just not worth it.

Hengre

Ohh that sounds bad.

VMH

prop_design,

I feel although the videos used previous version, it would still be resourceful and beneficial for others.

prop_design

hi vmh,

mostly it just took too much time. there were maybe 20hours of videos or so. all done in one take. i have probably remade them 3 times already. most people were only viewing maybe 6 mins or less of a 40min video. so it just doesn't make sense to make them and maintain them. there's no way for me to make a 6min video on any given topic.

i already deleted the videos and the channel. so no going back now. i have other things to do, so just no time for this. i didn't realize it would be such an endeavor when i started it. so live and learn.

some of the videos used Mecway, however, that wasn't the main focus.

anthony