Issue 71

M. Abdulla et alii, Fracture and Structural Integrity, 71 (2025) 124-150; DOI: 10.3221/IGF-ESIS.71.10

Mesh sensitivity analysis Mesh sensitivity analysis in ANSYS, or any FEA software, is a technique used to evaluate how the quality and density of the finite element mesh (the division of the geometry into small elements) affects the accuracy of the simulation results. It helps in determining the optimal mesh size and quality to ensure that the FEA results are reliable and representative of the actual behaviour of the system being analyzed. In a comprehensive mesh sensitivity analysis, three distinct mesh configurations were rigorously assessed: coarse, intermediate, and fine. The objective was to discern the impact of varying the number of elements on the SIF while concurrently recording the computational time for each case. Remarkably, the results demonstrated that the intermediate mesh configuration yielded SIF values that closely paralleled those of the fine mesh, all while accomplishing the level of resolution deemed adequate for the analysis. Intriguingly, this achievement in result fidelity did not come at the cost of computational efficiency. The intermediate mesh configuration demanded a substantially reduced computational time, approximately 50% less than the fine mesh configuration, making it an attractive and pragmatic choice for this specific analysis as depicted in Fig. 5. This finding underscores the optimization potential inherent in judiciously selecting an intermediate mesh, as it balances computational resource utilization and accurate SIF determination, thereby expediting the analysis without compromising the quality of results.

Figure 5: Mesh sensitivity test.

V ALIDATION OF THE MODEL

Validation of unrepaired plate or the unrepaired plate, a centre cracked plate with a crack length of 10 mm was subjected to an external tensile load of 50 MPa on its top and bottom ends and the SIF was calculated. The analytical Eqn.. (7) from [24] was used to validate the FE results as mentioned below.      a I K F a/b (7) From Tab. 3, it can be observed that for the unrepaired case, the difference in SIF between the present FE results and the theoretical results is 2.78%. F

Case

Simulation results

Theoretical results

Percentage error

Unrepaired

9.109 2.78 % Table 3: Validation of current results with theoretical ones for unrepaired plate. 8.862

130