DETAILED STUDIES ON STRESS CONCENTRATION BY CLASSICAL AND FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS

Stress concentration is very important aspect in all aspects of mechanical design, it arises due to geometric discontinuities in the structure common examples are openings in pressure vessels and piping it is observed that the maximum stress is much more than the nominal stress .The conventional methods for determining the stress concentration factors are the empirical formulae mentioned in design handbooks such as Roark’s formulae for stress and strain this formulas can also be expressed in terms of graphs the finite element method a regarded as the third dimension in engineering plays very important role in the overall design process, this is mainly because it reduces the dependence on standard available geometries, experimentation and most importantly the time and cost associated with it however it has been observed that the finite element analysis results are depended on mesh quality parameters and this fact has not been studied thoroughly the main aim of the present study is to consider a standard configuration that is a plate with a circular hole in it subjected to axial tension, We present here a number of meshes such as manual(ruled and splined)and automatic and study the impact on the results. Further we also present the comparison of several 2D elements such as triangular, quadrilateral and 3D elements such as hexahedral. We present the FEA solution and compare it with the exact analytical solution, it is hoped that the design engineers and the CAE community will benefit from the present study.