Development and practical use of analysis method to improve efficiency of mechanical transmitting element design in conceptual phase (Development to engineering designer of spring and cable analysis methods by own dedicated graphical user interface and contact functions)

In the recent manufacturing sector, various requirements, such as improving quality, improving performance, shortening the development period, cost reduction, energy saving and lightweight, are imposed. For satisfying the various requirements above, the engineering designers are required to optimize the entire system from components to combined products. In order to serve to solve the above problems, we implement improvements to add contact functions to the First Order Analysis (FOA) program which has been developed as an early design analysis method. Specifically, we add the self-contact function within parts and the contact function with outside parts to the three-dimensional nonlinear finite element program consisting of non-linear spring elements and beam elements, and carry out the verification analyses. As a result, this FOA program enables the nonlinear analysis on such a case as large deformation and contact. Because of its fast calculation speed, it enhances efficiency of the mechanical design. The case of our practical operation, which enables the design period reduction by perceivable system being embedded in 3D CAD system, is introduced in this paper.