Step 6 – Post-processing the FEA model
Once it is solved, we go to the post-processing step to view the results of the calculations.
Download this video clip.Video player: Video 13
Skip transcript: Video 13
Transcript: Video 13
Lewis Butler
As you can see here, we’ve got the display shape of the torsion test. And you can clearly see the movement that effectively means it behaves like a torque tube towards the front of the car where there’s a large amount of rotation going on and very little displacement vertically. And that is, again, a function of the constraint case that we used, which makes the other half of the car think that it’s being loaded in the opposite direction.
And again, you can see that a large amount of the movement comes from having this big hole in the top of the cockpit where, rather inconveniently, the driver needs to go. If it wasn’t for that, we could be a lot, lot stiffer. So that’s obviously the area we concentrate on in terms of stiffening the car to try and meet targets each season.
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In this case, Lewis was only interested in the relative stiffness of the chassis tub, particularly any effects due to modifications in the driver area which was the weakest in terms of torsion.