Super Elastic Alloy Eyeglass Frame Design Using the ANSYS Workbench Environment
Up front analysis at the concept stages of developing a device most often result in reduced time to market and a better more efficient product development cycle. Design Modeler (1) / DesignXplorer (2) and ANSYS Structural’s super-elastic material model (3) are used in this demonstration of a design process for an eyeglass frame. This example provides an illustration of using the parametric functionality of the ANSYS Workbench environment for a highly nonlinear application. The Workbench environment can be used to perform design iterations in conjunction with material laws only available in the standard ANSYS environment. A shape memory superelastic material law was formally included in ANSYS 8.0. The material law captures the super-elastic behavior of Nitinol (4) along with its unique hysteretic response under cyclic loading. In the demonstration, the eyeglass frame is subjected to crushing and cyclic loading events. Geometric design variables are varied in an attempt to increase the frame stiffness yet keep the peak strain levels in the frame below 10% strain, which is a typical elastic limit for Nitinol. The cyclic behavior of the material is also monitored under the design load to evaluate the potential of fatigue failure. The procedure demonstrates the ease in interfacing the suite of Workbench products with geometric, material and contact nonlinear analysis problems.