Mesh

In this section, we will mesh each gauge with one shell element. We will also hard code commands to the gauges so that ANSYS ignores their stiffness i.e. the original stiffness matrix is not changed by the addition of the gauges.

ANSYS looks for a thickness input for each "surface body" corresponding to the gauges. We'll give the gauges a thickness. Keep in mind that this thickness does not affect the strain values for the gauges since the gauges are just riding along on the crank in our model. So their strain will be the same as the underlying strain on the crank face.

We now show you how to insert commands to the surface bodies so that the stiffness of the gauges are ignored.

For the surface bodies to be fixed to the crank, much like a strain gauge would be perfectly glued on the crank, we need to specify the contacts between these two bodies as being bonded. Here, we show you how to perform this step using automatic connections.

(Optional) If automatic connections do not work, then one must define the contacts manually. The following video will show you how to do this.

Finally, we specify the surface elements to have a mesh size of one using edge sizing.

Go to Step 4: Physics Setup

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