In these days before Christmas my three boys always say
“How can Santa carry all those toys in just one little sleigh”?
They must weigh a ton the little ones are estimating.
The answer is advanced materials and some structural lightweighting.
So I told them this story – it’s quick and it’s true
Of how Santa knows a little engineering too!
To improve his design, new skis were in store
Made of carbon fiber face sheets and a balsa wood core.
To be sure, Santa wanted to test his sleigh’s upgrade
And so a simple static load calculation was made.
Worst case scenario Rudolph lands on the roof apex you see
Resulting in a concentrated load to the mid-span of the skis.
Helius Composite was the tool for the job
To do an analysis on this new thingamabob.
A Sandwich Analysis would do just the trick
Build your sandwich, apply your loads, it really is quite slick!
For the sandwich construction he found materials directly
From the tool’s handy built-in material library.
To start he would build a new laminate to be
The face sheets of his new composite ski.
Santa knows to resist bending the majority of fibers need to be
Oriented along the length of ski (direction: 0 deg).
To help add stiffness the skis needed more
So he couldn’t forget the balsa wood core.
With some geometry the defining of his sandwich was ending.
Now it was time to apply some beam bending!
Santa was really having some fun.
He wondered would he be safe carrying a ton?
With two skis below that’s 1000 pounds applied
With this loading that results in face sheet stress of 58.8 ksi
Will that stress level cause the skis to fail?
Or will his new sleigh be able to prevail?
He knows that the reported sigfmax
Is the maximum stress from the weight of his sack.
Now he can use the Stress-Strain and Strength tool
And apply the methods he learned in school.
A First Ply Failure analysis should do the trick
And for this, the Christmas – er – Christensen criterion is his smart pick.
So with his laminate defined and his max stress applied
His criterion selected and his failure location specified
Through the Calculate button he soon would avail
The Failure Index and which ply will fail.
He knows he is good with an F.I. less than 1
But Helius Composite wasn’t quite done.
Mrs Clause would also think it is great
Analysis shows a safety factor of 2.8!
And that’s just one story of Santa’s composites fun
But my story for you is not quite yet done.
If you were compelled by the how easy and quick
Santa was able to analyze with just a simple few clicks
Then you should visit autodesk.com and see
YOU can try Helius Composite for free!
There is online help – videos, tutorials and more
To help you get started with its composite tools galore.
And with that shameless plug, my post here is done.
Merry Christmas and Happy New Year everyone.
This post was done in collaboration with Dan Milligan
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