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INTRODUCTORY redAnTS TUTORIAL

Rajesh Bhaskaran
Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering
Cornell University

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Basic familiarity with MATLAB is assumed; so keep your MATLAB wits around as you indulge in this tutorial. Happy computing!

Problem Specification

The humble rectangular block shown below is under uniaxial tension. Note the dimensions of the block. The applied normal traction on faces with normals parallel to x' is 75 MPa. The Young's modulus of the material is 200 GPa and the Poisson ratio is 0.3. We'll assume that plane stress conditions apply.

 
We'll employ friendly redAnTS to solve this problem using FEA. We'll plot various components of stress and strain for the block and compare them with theory.

Theoretical Solution

As diligent students of solid mechanics, we know that since the block is in uniaxial tension, it should have a homogeneous state of stress and strain i.e. the stress and strain at every point in the block is identical. Yup, couldn't get simpler than that! The principal stress σ₁₁= 75 MPa.

Solution Steps

The FEA solution is divided into the following steps:

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