Refinements in stress computation for wide rectangular beam elements

This video details a refinement of the computation of stress in wide rectangular beam elements. Stress is often an important constraint in the design of flexures. Because flexures are relatively wide compared to their length, modelling them using classical beam theory lacks accuracy in certain load cases. Using the presented refinements, the error in the stress computation has been reduced by a factor of 2, from about 10% to only 5%. This is the second of four recent improvements in flexure modelling that are part of the PhD research of Koen Dwarshuis at the Precision Engineering lab (Dannis Brouwer) at the University of Twente. Details can be found in the PhD thesis: Dwarshuis, 2022. “Beam-based analysis of flexure mechanisms: Increasing computational efficiency, accuracy and design freedom” https://doi.org/10.3990/1.9789036554831 Research team: Koen Dwarshuis, Ronald Aarts, Marcel Ellenbroek, Dannis Brouwer Video by: Koen Dwarshuis, Marijn Nijenhuis Funding: HTSM 2017, NWO (16210)