Set up a Structural Buckling analysis
Note: This section covers procedures, loads, constraints, and options that are specific to Structural Buckling analyses only.
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Workflow: Run a Structural Buckling analysis
- Access the Simulation workspace.
- Click
(Setup tab > Study panel > New Simulation Study) to open the New Study dialog. - Select
Structural Buckling. - Optionally, use the Simplify contextual environment to make simulation-specific changes to the model, preserving the production model:
- Remove unnecessary features that only complicate the analysis and do not provide useful information. See Model Simplification (Defeaturing).
- Split faces to confine loads or constraints to a only portion of a larger face.
- Assign proper Materials.
- More information about materials can be found on the Analysis General materials page.
- Define the Constraints.
- More information about constraints can be found on the Analysis General Constraints page.
- Constraints affect the k constant in the Euler Critical Load equation.
- Define Loads.
- More information can be found on the Analysis General Loads page.
- Applied loads in a buckling analysis should result in compression of the model to avoid negative buckling load factors.
- Define Contacts.
- More information can be found on the Analysis Genereral Contacts page.
- Click
(Results tab > Manage panel > Settings) and define the Mesh and Adaptive Mesh Refinement settings.- The Settings dialog page has more information about analysis settings.
- More details about Mesh settings can be found on the Meshes section.
- Solve the Analysis.
- Review Results.
- More information about the results can be found on the Structural buckling results page.
Important: Structural buckling is determining the buckling load based on fully elastic buckling assumptions. It is assumed that all materials are below yield stress regardless of the magnitude of the buckling load. A high buckling load factor does not necessarily mean that a structure is safe. In a shorter column, the critical buckling load is much larger at which point it may surpass the yield stress of the material. It is recommended to run both a Static Stress analysis and a Structural Buckling analysis.