THE UNIVERSITY OF NEWCASTLE

DEPARTMENT OF MECHANICAL ENGINEERING

MECH4400 COMPUTATIONAL MECHANICS
Strand7 Assignment
Assignment 2
Issued: Friday 22nd March 2019
Due: 5pm Monday 15th April 2019

The attached drawing shows details of one-half of a step ladder. This ladder consists
of two 85 mm x 20 mm x 2 mm (thick) aluminium channel-section rails with 5 steps
equally spaced at a vertical height of 300 mm. A 2 mm thick aluminium cap at the top
of the ladder - see Section B in the drawing for details - provides the top step for this
ladder. The main steps here are assumed to be constructed in two halves and
pressed together to form the complete step. Each of these sections is manufactured
from 1mm thick aluminium and, when pressed together to form the step, parts that
touch together - the centre section and two end parts of the step (see drawing for
details) - effectively form a 2mm thick section. The steps are connected to the rails
using the two oval-shaped part of the step protruding through and held to the rails;
see figure 1. For this assignment assume the aluminium has a yield strength to
300MPa. Note even though the ladder in this assignment is based on the geometry
of a commercially available step ladder, several simplifications have been made so
much so that the results from this model cannot be used to infer the mechanical
strength of similar shaped commercially available ladders.

Figure 1. Ladder step connection to rails

In this assignment you are required to:

1. Create a beam finite element model of the ladder shown in the drawing. This
will require you to build the step cross-section in Strand7 using the details
supplied in the drawing. I suggest you save this plate cross-section of the step
as a separate model as it will be useful in part 2 of the assignment.

2. Create a detailed plate finite element model of the step ladder. I suggest you
start with the plate cross-section model of the step and use this geometry to
define beams on the centreline of all parts of the step allowing you to create
the plate model by extrusion. The difficult part in building this model is
creating the plate finite element mesh at the intersection between the step and
the rail. I suggest you build this mesh before extruding the beams on the
 cross-section to create a plate mesh of the step. I will discuss this part of the
assignment in class.

3. For both models, create boundary conditions simulating the ladder leaning up
against a wall with the rail making an angle of 70° to the horizontal (as per the
drawing). Here prevent nodes “on the ground” from moving vertically and
horizontally outwards and on the wall from moving horizontally. Note you need
to prevent a sufficient number of nodes in the model from moving horizontally
perpendicular to the outwards direction to prevent rigid body motion. Apply a
vertical load equivalent to 120kg on the middle step simulating a person
standing on the step. I will leave the method of applying this load in the beam
and plate models up to you but you need to document your method in the
report. For both models, determine the deflection and stress within the step-
ladder under load. Compare predictions from the models and comment. You
may want to look at predicted deflections and stresses, location of high stress
points, deflected shape under loading, factor of safety determined from both
models and predicted weight of both models (use the same grade of
aluminium alloy in each model).

Report
Submit a report documenting all requested information outline above. I suggest
adding suitable pictures of your model from Strand7 into your report. Before creating
the jpg picture, ensure the screen background colour is white.
Select the gear looking icon

select View options

select the white colour and select solid – see below.

Hand-in a hardcopy of your report and submit all your strand7 models (files with .st7
extension) via a zipped file to blackboard for assessment.