Nonlinear Analysis of Thin-Walled Assemblies Using Inventor Nastran

Real-world problems are rarely linear or static. Nonlinearities often impact the prediction of a product's behavior in unpredictable ways. These add uncertainty and risk to decisions made from either virtual or physical test results for engineers and designers who don't understand them. In this presentation we’ll use Inventor Nastran software to mid-surface a thin-walled assembly and weld the parts together. We’ll then go through the process of validating our model and then performing a nonlinear static analysis with linear and then nonlinear materials. Once the existing design is validated, we’ll perform a light-weighting design optimization to reduce the assembly’s weight, and then we’ll perform a nonlinear verification analysis on the final, reduced-weight design.