You are viewing an old version of this page. View the current version.

Compare with Current View Page History

« Previous Version 11 Next »

3D Finite-Element Analysis of a Bike Crank

This tutorial contains numerous embedded YouTube videos. You may not be able to see the videos until you approve that the Flash plugin on the website is safe. To approve the plugin, look for a shield logo to the right of the website url bar (chrome) or a brick-like icon to the left of the website url bar (in Firefox).

Learning Goals

In this tutorial, you will learn to:

  • Determine the displacements and stresses in a bike crank using 3D FEA capabilities in ANSYS Mechanical
  • Verify the finite-element results from ANSYS by refining the mesh and also comparing with hand calculations

Problem Specification

Consider the following bike crank model.

[!crank_geo.png|width=400!|^crank_geo.png]

To orient ourselves, the following figure shows the location of a similar bike crank mounted on a bicycle.

[!crank_on_bike.png|width=400!|^crank_on_bike.png]

Material properties: The bicycle crank's material is aluminum 6061-t6. The Young's modulus is 10,000 ksi, and the Poisson's Ratio is .33.

Boundary conditions: Apply a load of 100 lbf in the y-direction on the right hole surface and fix the 3 left hole surfaces as shown below. Note that this is an approximation of the actual loads and constraints on the bike crank.

[!crank_bcs.png|width=400!|^crank_bcs.png]

Using ANSYS Mechanical, determine the following:

  • Deformed shape
  • Displacement field
  • Stress distribution
    Unknown macro: {latex}

    $\sigma_x(x,y,z)$



Go to Step 1: Pre-Analysis & Start-Up

Go to all ANSYS Learning Modules

  • No labels