Movement

mike

Picture a pin inside of an E-clip. I pull on the back of the clip so that the pin is pulled out through the arms of the clip. The arms will bend out of the way. I know there will probably be non-linear stuff going on but more interested in seeing what areas of the clip 'light up' when the clip starts moving. Since it's a thin flat part and all in one plane, I'm thinking it doesn't really need to be 3D (2D with a unit thickness). How would you most efficiently model this?
Thanks!

Victor

If this is not too simple, you could substitute the pin with pressure, force, or normal displacement (under frictionless support) on the arms and use fixed support or displacement constraints at the location where it's being pulled. I would use 3D with the true thickness because it doesn't sound like a good approximation to plane stress or plane strain that 2D uses.

If you want to model the pin itself and use contact, I would do it as 3D because Mecway is generally more capable in 3D than 2D. If you're making the mesh by hand, it would certainly help to start in 2D though, then use Mesh tools -> Extrude to convert to 3D. There's a sample described in the manual called PipeClip.liml which sounds very similar to this approach.

It sounds like you just want a quick dirty model so the choice between 2D and 3D would depend on which is easiest to mesh. If you already have a good quality 2D or 3D CAD model, use that.

mike

Thanks, I do have the cad model already so I'll trim it down and use that. The biggest issue for me is that as the pin is pulled through the end of the clip, the contact locations will change slightly which will most likely change the location of the reaction forces. But you're right, if I just hit the ends of the E-clip with a displacement equal to the max pin diameter that would probably be worst case.
Thanks!