MOTIVATION

WHY TRANSFER DATA?

The idea behind transferring data from I-DEAS to ANSYS is that we can use the solutions already provided by I-DEAS and manipulate them either in ANSYS or with another outside source. Ideally, it would have been easiest to do the work in the I-DEAS software package, but due to it's limitations, we have resolved to extract the data, and work with the necessary data outside of the limitations of I-DEAS. This process allows for more control of the situation because we are we will extract only the information that we want or need, manipulate it, and then redisplay the data with ANSYS for further analysis.

Most of the data manipulation in this case is done with MatLab™ or with Excel.

A LITTLE MORE DETAIL:

On a more detailed level, the motivation here is to redisplay the strain that was experienced by the whole cylinder during testing. The way we are going to do that is to extract the strain mode shapes, already solved for by I-DEAS, from the I-DEAS FE package and recombine the necessary data into a representative hoop strain mode shape. In order to get a total response of the cylinder, we require a summation of these hoop strain mode shapes in the frequency domain. After this we will take the experimental hoop strain and insert this data from a strain gage into the proper FE node. Noting that there will be a difference in amplitude, we will then magnify all of the other nodal strain values appropriately. Finally we will take an inverse transform to get to the time information for each of the nodes in the cylinder model.

This time information will be displayed in an ANSYS model as contours and a color gradient. This will be accomplished by first manipulating the strain data into two different forms, nodal contour displacements and nodal fictitious tempeatures, which are both proportional to strain. The displacements and temperatures will then be imposed on the cylinder model. The displacements will be displayed as distortion, or contours, on the surface of the model and the fictitious temperatures will be displayed by a color gradient on the same surfacel.

The first step in this process is to determine the format in which I-DEAS exports the information and also that format that the data needs to be in for ANSYS to properly interpret the all of this information. For this we can refer to the documentation that is provided with I-DEAS.