Truss Design and Analysis essays

Truss Design and Analysis essays Our five initial designs consisted of one with two triangulated cantilevered rods with one tension rod, another that was a three rod equilateral pyramid, the third was a triangular cantilevered beam with a tension rod and side support rods at the wall, another had three triangulated cantilevered rods with one tension rod, and the fifth was a purely 2-D right triangle truss. Each group member picked a design that he wanted to optimize. The ones chosen were the ones each of us initially came up with. We really already knew the ones we wanted to try on ANSYS so the other two were created just for part 1 of the project. We chose to further investigate the one with two triangulated cantilevered rods with one tension rod, the one that had three triangulated cantilevered rods with one tension rod, and the one with a triangular cantilevered beam with a tension rod and side support rods at the wall. This was one of our most basic truss designs for the contest. The concept of the design was simplicity and minimization of welds. It was initially thought that the failure would occur at one of the solder welds therefore if the number of welds was limited there would be less chance of failure. Initially the truss was created in ANSYS with just the 3 main beams from the wall to the loaded tip. Horizontal and vertical loads were applied to the tip and the system was solved. The stress and deflection were analyzed cross-members were added in the center of the beams. The simulation was solved again and reanalyzed and cross-members were again added at 25 and 75 percent of the length of the main beams. The cross members were used to prevent the buckling in the center of the beams by limiting the allowed deflection. With the three cross-member systems in place, the truss was resolved and the deflection and stresses were measured. After comparing the results from each of the configurations, it was determined that adding the cross-members...