About Static Analysis
Statics is the branch of mechanics that deals with forces acting on a body when it is at equilibrium. Use a static analysis to determine the state of a mechanism when it is subject to known forces. The application searches for a configuration in which all the loads and forces in your mechanism balance and the potential energy is zero. A static analysis can identify a static configuration faster than a dynamic analysis can because it does not consider velocity in the calculation.
Although the result of a static analysis is a steady state configuration, compare your results with the ones in the
examples to better understand your results.
Keep the following key points in mind when running a static analysis:
• If you do not specify an initial configuration, the static analysis starts from the currently displayed position of the model when you click Run.
• When you run a static analysis, a graph of acceleration versus iteration number appears, showing the maximum acceleration of the mechanism's entities. As the analysis calculation proceeds, both the graph display and the model display change to reflect the intermediate positions reached during the calculation. When the maximum acceleration for the mechanism reaches 0, your mechanism has reached a static configuration.
• You can adjust the maximum step size between each iteration of the static analysis by changing the Maximum step factor on the Preferences tab of the Analysis Definition dialog box. Reducing this value reduces the positional change between each iteration and can be useful when analyzing mechanisms incorporating large accelerations.
• If a static configuration for your mechanism cannot be found, the analysis ends and the mechanism remains in the last configuration reached during the analysis.
• Any measures computed will be for the final times and positions, not a time history for the settling process.
Click
Mechanism Analysis to open the
Analysis Definition dialog box and create, edit, and run your analyses.