Strand7 Software:  Galleries:  Automotive:  Crankshaft

Crankshaft

Steel crankshaft for 4-cylinder petrol engine. This type of mesh can be constructed in Strand7 using the element manipulation tools. After separately meshing each part, the complete mesh is assembled by using the cut-copy-paste functions. To model the main bearings, restraint conditions were applied in cylindrical user-defined coordinate systems.

The first mode of vibration is a torsional mode. The animation clearly shows that the crank rotates about the main bearings. Normally this type of restraint condition would generate a structure with one rigid body mode - unrestrained rotation about the main axis. The shift option in Strand7 allows rigid body modes to be eliminated automatically.

Strand7 can animate normalised stresses corresponding to each mode of vibration. This is useful for detecting possible areas of high stress, when the structure is excited at a resonant frequency.