Lab Activities To Validate Cae Based Results For Hose Deformations

Nowadays in academics and industry, where multiple computer-based tools are being employed for design and analysis of engineering systems, it is of chief importance to provide to the user of such software tools information about the importance of validation in a lab-setting. It can be said that it is even more important in academics because students are at the initial phase of their engineering formation. Towards that end, a project involving flexible elements, such as hoses and cables, was utilized to get students involved in a validation exercise. Flexible elements are absolutely essential to the safe and successful operation of any vehicle, but they are often difficult to design and define because they are subject to large elastic deformations and because of their potential collisions with other components. This combination of factors leaves flexible elements to be rushed into production near the end of a design cycle. Therefore, in collaboration between industry and academia, a CAE-based scheme has been developed and has been implemented as a software tool to assist in the design (routing) of flexible components. For validation purposes, a group of four students in a Capstone Design Course were asked to apply Reverse Engineering (RE) techniques to measure points along an actual hose and enter those points into the simulation software for comparison and validation of the model. This validation process is the work presented in this manuscript.