HERDS and PETs Ansys Analysis

Project Overview

This project involves the simulation and analysis of Hierarchical Extending and Reorienting Deployable Structures (HERDS), Kresling Mechanism, and Pop-Up Extending Truss (PET) structures using ANSYS Mechanical APDL. The simulations include various tests and configurations to evaluate the structural performance under different conditions.

Project Structure

The project is organized into the following directories:

data/: Contains the input data, results, and plots for the simulations.
- models/: Includes the model data for HERDS and PETs.
  - herds/: Model data for HERDS structures.
  - pets/: Model data for PET structures.
  - kresling/: Model data for Kresling structures.
  - short_scissor/: Model data for short member scissor structures.
  - long_scissor/: Model data for long member scissor structures.
- results/: Simulation results.
- paper_results/: The official simulations results used in the paper.
- plots/: Generated plots from the simulation results.
scripts/: Scripts to generate all data and generate figures.
- generate_figures: Scripts to generate all figures.
- generate_results: Scripts to genertate all results.
src/: Source code for the project.
- run_ansys_simulation.py: The main simulation loop.
- ansys_utils.py: Utility functions for running ANSYS simulations.
- model_utils.py: Functions for generating the beam models.
- boundary_conditions.py: Functions for applying boundary conditions.
- parser_utils.py: Argument parser utilities.
- logging_utils.py: Logging utilities.

Installation

Clone the repository:

git clone https://github.com/mfogelson/herds_pets_ansys_analysis.git
cd herds_pets_ansys_analysis

Set up the environment: Ensure you have the necessary dependencies installed. You may want to create a virtual environment:
```
conda create --name herds_pets_env python=3.10
conda activate herds_pets_env
pip install -r requirements.txt
```
Ensure ANSYS is installed and configured: The scripts require ANSYS Mechanical APDL to be installed and properly configured on your system.

Usage

Running Simulations

Prepare the input data: Ensure the model configuration CSV files are placed in the appropriate directory under data/models/.
Run a simulation: Use the provided scripts to run simulations with various configurations. For example, to run a simulation for a PET structure with a specific configuration, use:
```
python src/run_ansys_simulation.py <filesname> <filepath> <boundary_condition>
```
You can specify additional parameters as needed.
```
python src/run_ansys_simulation.py "l1_17.16_l2_3.7_l3_30.64_alpha_0.6_cross_3.0x3.0_n_cells_3.csv" "data/models/pets/deployment_test" "cant_x" --scale 5 --mech_type PET --cross_scale 0.6
```
NOTE: The flags and defaults can be found in src/parser_utils.py

Generating Figures

Generate figures from simulation results: Use the scripts in the scripts/ directory to generate figures from the simulation results. For example, to generate a plot for the deployment test:
```
python scripts/generate_figures/figure3a_deployment_test_script.py
```
NOTE: The path is currenly configured to data/paper_results this must be updated in the script to plot new results from data/results

Contributing

Contributions are welcome! Please fork the repository and create a pull request with your changes.

License

This project is licensed under the MIT License. See the LICENSE file for more details.

Contact

For any questions or issues, please contact mfogelson@cmu.edu.

Citation

@article{thomas2024nonplanar,
  title={Non-Planar Hierarchical Composition of Extending Metamaterials for Deployable Load-Bearing Structures},
  author={Thomas, Sawyer and Fogelson, Mitchell B. and Manchester, Zachary and Lipton, Jeffrey I.},
  year={2024},
  url={https://www.github.com/mfogelson/herds_pets_ansys_analysis}  
}