Folding or bending of steel full bar

Denis,

    Maybe you can have a try by following these steps:

    First,you should know the vertical distance between point C and point C' when the bar bends down;

    Then set a forced displacement(prescribed translation) which equals that distance;

    The third,make a force measure of the forced displacement,hope these can help you!

The size of the force is 245N

you can use optimized design studies

Yes, Denis, it is possible to analyze this, but you will have to use solid elements with material plasticity, and also large deformation analysis + contact analysis. If you want to model the plastic collapse, you cannot model the load using a "load", instead, you will need to model the load using an enforced displacement.

The nonlinear solver is sensitive to mesh, I advise to use brick/wedge elements to model the beam.

Here are a few pictures from a plastic collapse analysis I did a few years ago. I recall that I also had an animation, but I can't seem to find it. Unfortunately I can't run Creo where I sit now, so I can't re-create these results.

In this case I have no contacts, but the load is axial, and what you see here is post-critical behavior, if you enforce a vertical displecement, along the edge of the beam end.

/Mats L/