Siemens NX tutorial

Aircraft assembly and structure simulation

Aircraft structure designed from a solidworks tutorial1

1
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dRCKmc0ZxBk

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 1

1. Reset dialog boxes

 Click on MenuPreferencesUser Interface…

 In the User interface Preferences dialog box, click on the Options item of the left tree,

and then on the Reset Dialog Memory button.

 Click OK to validate.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 2

2. Structure assembly

2.1. Adding the parts

 Download the zip file aircraft.zip from the course web page and unzip it into
a folder. This file contains three part files:
o aircraft.prt which contains the fuselage and tail of an airbus A380
on real scale.
o left wing.prt which contains the left wing of the A380.
o right wing.prt which contains the right wing of the A380.

 Create a new empty assembly file .

 Select as first part to insert the file aircraft.prt. Under Settings of the Add
Component dialog box, select AIRCRAFT as Reference Set.

 Then, add the file left wing.prt, and select LEFT WING as Reference Set.
 Do the same with the file right wing.prt, with RIGHT WING as Reference Set

 Move manually the wings so to position them approximately as shown below.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 3

2.2. Setting the constraints

 If not already done, add a Fix constraint on the fuselage.

 Then, add two Parallel constraints between the tip of the left (resp. right) wing and
the tip of the left (resp. right) tail.

 Add a Touch constraint between the front point of the base curve of
each wing and the front point of the base curve of the corresponding hole in the fuselage
(see figure). Note, in order to be able to select points, you will have to activate the

End Point option in the toolbar.

 Redo the same operation for both wings, this time with the end points of the base curves
of the wings and the corresponding holes in the fuselage.

 The assembly is done. Save it. There should be no more degree of freedom
existing in the assembly.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 4

3. FEM meshes

3.1. Correcting geometric defects

 With the assembly file still open, create a new NX Nastran FEM file
.
 We want to mesh the whole aircraft surface (fuselage + wing) using only one mesh.
However, the wings and the fuselage do not share a common edge at their junctions. If
we try to mesh it, we will end up with three different surface meshes. Moreover the
fuselage contains some geometric defects (small holes) which will prevent any simulation
from running.

 Use the Stitch Edge tool in order to correct these defects. Try to figure out how it
is functioning and use it till you get the following message.

3.2. Creating the 2D (shell) mesh

 Create a 2D (shell) mesh of the aircraft surface (NOT the solid frames inside
the aircraft) with CTRIA3 elements type and a mesh size of 300 mm.
 Before creating the mesh, add to it a shell thickness of 10 mm. See page 4 of the Valve
tutorial if you do not know/remember how to do it.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 5

3.3. Creating the 3D meshes

 Hide the newly created 2D-mesh as well as the aircraft surface, in order to keep only the
wings and tails frames.

 Create 4 3D-meshes of elements type CTETRA(4)

, with an element size of 200 mm.

 Add the Aluminum 2014 material to all 5 meshes.

 Save your FEM file.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 6

4. Structure simulation

4.1. Coupling the 2D-mesh with the 3D-meshes

 With the FEM file still open, create a new NX Nastran SIM file
.
 Use the Surface-to-Surface Gluing tool, under the

Simulation Object Type button. This will “glue” the 2D-mesh with the 3D-
meshes at their contact points. We will later apply some loads on the wings and tails, the
coupling with the 3D-meshes (frames) is here to guarantee that the wings and tails will
not collapse under the loads.
 Try to figure out how this tool is functioning. You should obtain 4 glued regions
(corresponding to the 4 3D-meshes).

4.2. Adding constraints

 Add 6 Fixed Constraints

at the
face extremities of the
frame lying inside the
fuselage.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 7

4.3. Adding gravity and first simulation

 Add a Gravity load of 9810 mm/s² along the –Z direction.

 Solve this simulation . This will take several minutes to complete.

WARNING: be sure to have at least 3 Gb RAM free.

 Once the simulation successfully completed, double-click on Structural, under Result at

the bottom of the Simulation Navigator in order to visualize them

.
 In the Post Processing Navigator, double-click on Displacement Nodal, in order to

visualize the displacements .

 As you can observe, the default visualization parameters are quite lame four our case. In

order to improve it, use the Edit Post View tool .

 In the Post View dialog box, do the following operations:
o Under the tab Result set the Units option to meters (m)

.
The left colorbar will be more readable, showing deformation scale in
meters instead of millimeters.
o Under the Display tab, set the Edges option to Feature

. This will only

show the main geometric features of the airplane instead of all the triangles
of the meshes.
o Finally, under the Deformation tab, set the Scale options to 1.0 and

Absolute .
This will show the true deformations ongoing on the plane.
o Click OK to validate.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 8

 Now the visualization of the deformations should look much better:

 You can also animate the deformation using the tool Animate .

4.4. Adding local variable pressure field on the left wing

 Before to continue: be careful to follow the below instructions to the letter.

These instructions involve opening many imbricate dialog boxes. Failure to set the right
parameters into one, may lead to the failure of every other dialog box.

 Tip 1: if you selected the wrong object, you can deselect it with the shift key of your
keyboard + left click of the mouse.
 Tip 2: if you think you messed-up the parameters of your current dialog box, you can
reset them by clicking on the top right arrow of the dialog box .

 Go back to the simulation by

clicking on the Return To Home
button .
 Click on the Pressure tool
. In the Pressure
tool box, select the surface of the
left wing as well as its frame.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 9

 In the Pressure option of the Pressure dialog box, click on the small “=”

, and select New FieldFormula.

 A new dialog box Formula Field will open. We will write a simple formula describing
the variation of an arbitrary pressure field on the left wing.
 In the Domain sub-box, select the option Parameter Plane.

 You will see two new (dimensionless) variables appearing: u and v. These are variables
that we will use in our pressure formula. These two variables correspond to the
parametric coordinates of the B-Spline surface describing our left wing. See the course 5
of the CADCG course of E. Béchet for more details on the matter.
 What is needed to know here is that the variables u and v are real parameters both in the
[0, 1] interval. Any point of the left wing surface can be accessed through these variables.

 The Spatial Map sub-box is here to set to which surface the parameters u and v will
correspond. To set u and v to the left wing, select Object as Bounding Box Type and select
the surface of the left wing.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 10

 For the local coordinates system (CSYS), we will use for the origin the front point of the
base curve of the left wing, the same as the one chosen in paragraph 2.2. “Setting the
constraints”, and the X and Y axis of the global coordinates system.

 To this aim, click on the CSYS Dialog button , in order to open the CSYS dialog box.
In this dialog box, select the X-axis, Y-axis, Origin option in the menu. Set the X axis as
XC and the Y axis as YC.

 For specifying the origin of our local coordinates system, click on the Point Dialog

button .
 In the Point dialog box, select the End Point option in the menu

and select the front point of the base curve of

the left wing, the same as the one chosen in paragraph 2.2. “Setting the constraints”.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 11

  Close the following dialog boxes by clicking on OK
o Point dialog box.
o CSYS dialog box.

 At this point you should be back in the Formula Field dialog box. Now that we have
defined parametric coordinates, their corresponding B-Spline surface and a local
coordinates system, we can finally set a pressure formula for the left wing.
 In the Expression sub-box of the Formula Field dialog box, enter the following pressure
formula:
-75000*(1-v)^2*(1-u)
 This formula is expressed in terms of the parametric coordinates u and v and aims to
mimic (very) qualitatively the pressure on an airbus wing2. The value 75000 is the mean
pressure value on the wing in Pa. The negative value is there to tell that the pressure is in
fact negative and the wing should be “pulled” towards the top (outward normal with
respect to the surface).

 Insert this formula into the appropriate field and click on the Accept Edit button .

 Finally, change the pressure units in the Expression sub-box to Pa, by right-clicking on
MPa.

2
Note : for real simulations, a better formula should be used.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 12

 You should have the following Formula Field dialog box:

 Click OK to validate, and again

OK in the Pressure dialog box.
 You should obtain read arrows
figuring the local variable
pressure field as follow:

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 13

4.5. Adding local variable pressure field on the other wings

 Redo the above operations for the right wing using this time for the local CSYS the front
point of the base curve of the right wing, the same as the one chosen in paragraph 2.2.
“Setting the constraints”. As pressure formula, use the following:
-75000*(1-v)^2*(u)
 Redo the above operations for the left and right tails, using suitable local CSYS and the
corresponding (left/right) pressure formula.
 You should obtain the following pressure distributions on all wings.

4.6. Final simulation

 Solve this new simulation , where variable pressure fields have been added to the,
where variable pressure fields have been added to the wings. This will take several
minutes to complete.
WARNING: be sure to have at least 3 Gb RAM free.

 Again, visualize your result

as explained in section 4.3
“Adding gravity and first
simulation” of this tutorial.
You should obtain a result
similar to the one below.

A&M–CAD in mechanical engineering - Written by Christophe Leblanc Page 14