Older articles (2/27)

1. Inplace editing

   This article describes how to edit files in-place programmatically. This has been part of my toolbox for a long time, so I thought I’d document it here.

2. Element names in Calculix

   CalculiX consists out of two programs;

   • cgx: pre- and postprocessor
   • ccx: solver

   A minor annoyance is that the naming of element types is not consistent between them.

   Below is a table that provides a mapping between the two.

3. FEA based on STEP geometry using gmsh and CalculiX

   In this article an FEA workflow based on CAD geometry in the form of STEP files and gmsh for mesh generation and CalculiX as the solver will be discussed. This workflow is primarily suited for isotropic materials.

   If one is working with FreeCAD, the FEM workbench enables a similar workflow, if gmsh and CalculiX are installed. But the author prefers this method because it makes the details of the process more transparent and accessible.

   All the software used here is freely available. On UNIX-like systems (e.g. FreeBSD, Linux) it can generally be installed by the native package manager. Installing the prerequisites under ms-windows is outside the scope of this article.

4. Profiling with pyinstrument

   After having used the built-in tracing profiler cProfile for a while now, I came across the statistical (sampling) profiler pyinstrument.

   A statistical profiler does not influence the runtime of the program as much as a tracing profiler as cProfile does. Additionally, pyinstrument shows the result in a different way from cProfile.

   So in this article, I will be profiling my repotool program. This program helps me maintain a mirror of FreeBSD packages that I use.

5. Reading CalculiX mesh with Python

   This article explains how to make CalculiX nodes and elements accessible with Python.

6. Folded leaf spring ball joint flexure

   The Dutch-language engineering book “Constructieprincipes” by M.P. Koster contains flexure made out of four folded leaf springs that kind of acts like a ball joint.

   The point where the load is applied should rotate around a virtual center formed by the point where the fold lines meet. The goal of this article is to simulate that and see if it works.

7. Reading an RSS feed

   Based on a question from Bill Seymour, this is what I came up with.

8. Creating a rectangular tube in CalculiX

   Rectangular tubes are one of the standard shapes of beams. This article shows how to create them in CalculiX GraphiX.

9. Meshing a circle with hex elements in CalculiX

   In this article a methd of creating a second order hex mesh for circular cross-sections will be shown.

10. Corrugation against buckling

    Composite sandwich products loaded in bending tend to fail by buckling of the laminate under compression. The author’s intuition is that corrugating the surface under compression should help. So the question is; does it help, and how much. That is what will be investigated in this article.