Elmer Discussion Forum

Hi, I am new here.

I want to ask a couple of questions to determine whether I should take the time to learn Elmer.

Is Elmer good (efficient) for simulating assemblies for mechanics problems. Having a setup with multiple parts,
that has fasteners fixing them together, maybe even some plastic parts that is heat staked or fits on shafts in the assembly.
Looking to do simulations on assemblies as a whole, these assemblies typically has like 20-30 difference components.
Would I be able to do motion analyses of the assembly?

This is also basically asking in the case of Solid Mechanics, whether Elmer is better than something like SolidWorks Express,
which seems to be able to handle mechanic simulation of individual parts well enough, but only really allows you to do just that.

The advance SolidWorks simulation packages, is too expensive at this stage for the company I am working for.

Is it worth the trouble or even reasonable to have an assembly in SolidWorks. Take parts of the assembly to gmsh. Mesh them then export to Elmer,
rebuild the assembly in Elmer and then setup simulations. (That is what I imagine the process would be like.)

I hope I make sense.

If you require contact surfaces between the parts in the assembly then I would suggest CalculiX, it is also open source, Calculix is much more focused on solid mechanics. Elmer is very good at fluid, heat, and multi-physics.

I think you should take the time to learn Elmer, not for this problem, and Calculix.

Have to agree here. For pure mechanical problems I would go with dedicated codes. -Peter