Hi everyone,

I would like to share a work combining MODSIM and Visual Scripting. A LinkedIn post was shared on the CATIA community resuming this work too.

Objectives

The objective was to build a structural analysis of an antenna designed with Visual Scripting. If the design is modified through Visual Scripting, the geometrical supports used to define the FEM and the scenario will automatically be updated. There won't be any manual changes to do.

Video

Design in CATIA Visual Scripting

All the design was done with CATIA Visual Scripting

Many parameters can be modified such as:

• The height of the antenna

• The height of the top part

• The basis profile number of sides 

• The bars radius

• The width of the antenna (the antenna is divided in different parts, each part can have a different width, so we can play on the shape of the antenna)

FEM construction

Based on  the shape of the antenna, it has been decided  to model it with beams elements for the "lattice" part and with 3D elements for the top part.

Beam Mesh:

In Visual Scripting, an "assemble" of all the edges representing the "lattice" part has been published. This is the support of the beam mesh. When modifying the design, this "assemble" will be updated with the new edges.

A topological creation has been created to impose the points that will be clamped in the scenario.

The beam profile section is a circular shape, and the radius is given by a parameter in Visual Scripting. When modifying this parameter, it updates the radius of the beam profile

3D Mesh:

For the top part, an "Add" of all the 3D part constituting the part has been created. This is the support of the 3D mesh. When modifying the design, this "add" will be updated with the new parts.

The mesh is a tetrahedron mesh

A proximity group of element faces has been created over the support of this 3D mesh. It will be used to define the distributed load

Material:

The material used for the beam and the 3D mesh is a metal alloy

Scenario

In this structural analysis, we want to simulate a wind of 150km/h and see the displacement of the antenna.

For the 3D mesh a distributed load has been defined. This load is depending on the height of the top part of the antenna. For a wind of 150km/h it gives a distributed load of F = 300 * L. This formula is the input of the distributed load, taking into account the parameter defining the height of the antenna defined in Visual Scripting.

A beam load has been defined for the "lattice" part. As given that 1kg/s2 = 1 N/m, the distributed load is 300kg/s2.

The gravity has been taken in account too.

The antenna is clamped at each profile side point.

Parametric Optimization

One of the strong point of Visual Scripting is to make the design vary, and so do some parameters of our object. 

It is interesting to use a parametric optimization over some design parameters to get the best design. For this study, here are the parameters that will vary:

• The bar radius (20mm to 50mm - step of 10mm)

• The height of the antenna (8000mm to 12000mm - step of 1000mm)

• The profile number of sides (4 to 7 - step 1)

The design is not valid if the maximal displacement exceeds 15mm. The best design will be the one with the lighter mass.

Given the results, the best design will be for a bar radius of 40mm, a height of the antenna of 8000mm and 7-side profile (heptagon).

The columns in red are the one where the design is not valid, because the max displacement is over 15mm.

3DXML

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