Hi,

Firstly, this my first visit to the forum, so a small intro about me to start of with I am an enthusiast and hard core user of Solidworks 3D. From past 2 years I learning Solidworks Simulation at my workplace and executed quite a number of projects in the same. I am very much here to give and take a lot of SW knowledge, tips and tricks.

Moving strainght to the point of discussion - I have a housing of a gearbox made out of steel plates bent and welded, now there is need to change the wall thickness of the housing

and then perform a Static Analysis.(Have attached the images of the Housing for reference and visualisation). This leaves me with two configurations of the model with two different thickness values.

To perform the FEA in SOlidworks Simulation, we plan to apply shell elements as the mesh elements - where in there is an option to changing the thickness of the cross section in Simlation package itself. We plan to change the thickness of the cross - section by using this option.

We have team at customer end who is very much adamant on asking us to change the thickness of the geometry in 3D CAD software and then use it for FEA. They believe that changing the thickness in 3D CAD will work differently from option of changing the thickness while applying shell element in Solidworks simulation.

I would like to know about both the approach described above in changing the thickness of the housing does it matter so much?

Will be glad to know from the fraternity about it.

Thanks in advance.

regards

Rohit Choudhary