STUDY OF THE INFLUENCE OF RIBBON THICKNESS ON PROFILE BEAM RESISTANCE U

Abstract

The use of computational methods has been widespread in the design of mechanical designs because it is possible to develop slender structures with cost reduction and ensuring the necessary safety factor for the application. The most used method for these simulations in commercial software is the finite element technique that consists in solving problems involving different equations by dividing the problem domain into finite elements. Thus, this work aims to carry out a study of the thickness variation influence of ribs in beam of U profile. For evaluation, a beam of 500 mm length, 100 mm core height and 50 mm table width was used. The force applied to the structure was 30 kN, at the ends were used fixed geometries. The mesh used to solve the problem consists of 17514 nodes and 8916 elements. The thicknesses studied were 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 50, 100, 200, 300, 400 and 500 mm. The results for the thickness of 2 mm presented the region near the rib as the lowest stiffness, indicating that in this case the thickness did not contribute to the increasing of the structure stiffness. For the other thicknesses, increased stiffness in the ribbed region was identified. The polynomial models obtained in the von Mises thickness x stress, thickness x deformation, thickness x safety factor, thickness x mass distributions presented coefficient of determination ranging from 0.80807 to 1 indicating good reliability in data representation.