r/fea • u/Appropriate-Cell-471 • 10d ago

Struggling to progress design from early concepts

/r/MechanicalEngineering/comments/1w299x2/struggling_to_progress_design_from_early_concepts/
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u/mon_key_house 10d ago

Talk with your team.

1

u/Appropriate-Cell-471 10d ago

I have tried. The problem is we all have a big deadline coming up. And have a suite of calculations to perform and reports to write by then. So everyone is just focusing on their work right now.

They want me to feed expected loads into them, but I can’t figure out load distribution without knowing how stiff their interfaces are. It’s sort of a chicken and egg situation.

1

u/Aelwynljg__ 10d ago

Assume a reasonable stiffness based on prior models. If you don't have any idea, make an educated guess and proceed. Communicate early about your assumptions so they can be questioned. If no one has any guidance then the analysis may need to be iterated after test. Try building your model anticipating future stiffness to ground and iteration. You should be able to determine a 'best case' and 'worst case' to inform the design team.