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"Verification and validation" can be thought of as a formal process for checking results. We previously performed some sanity checks on the deformed shape. A further basic check includes determining how the results change on refining the mesh. The following video shows how to recalculate the results on a refined mesh. Note that it comes from a different project, but the procedure is the same.
Our results don't change significantly on refining the mesh. The medium and finest meshes yield virtually identical results. So, we'll use the results from the medium mesh (element size of 0.05 in) to compare with the thin-walled and thick-walled hand calculations.
Comparison with thin and thick-walled theory from the pre-analysis:
Our FEA results compare very well with thick-walled theory, where agreement is within 0.01-0.03%. The thin-walled theory is beginning to lose validity. For this geometry, the FEA predictions differ from thin-walled theory by as much as 20%. .