Verification & Validation — Lesson 8

This lesson covers the process of refining a mesh in Ansys Workbench™ simulation integration platform to ensure the results are independent of the discretization. The lesson explains how to create a duplicate module, make unique changes, and create a finer mesh by reducing the element size. It also discusses how to perform the solution process again with the new mesh and compare the stress contours to numerical results. The lesson further illustrates the comparison of hoop and axial stress results from the refined mesh to the theoretical results for both a thin and thick-walled pressure vessel.

Mesh refinement results:

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%. .