How sharp is the feasible edge of the 2 mm laser-cut bracket web at 0.1 mm resolution, and is it mesh noise?

What it found

A small scan (stylised, preliminary). Re-scanning web width w in 0.1 mm steps (15.5–17.5 mm) at three radii and three meshes, the peak von Mises stress is not monotone in w in any of the nine series. Its residual jitter about a quadratic trend is 0.9–2.4 MPa, shrinking with refinement, and the stress just below each feasible edge is only 0.1–1.7 MPa over the 100 MPa limit, so the edge is a band of about 0.5 mm and the refinement shift reported in simdesign-widerweb is not separated from mesh noise. The source of the jitter is not identified. Simulated only.

Paper, code and results

• README and method
• Experiments and results
• Code
• Tests

More in Simulation-first design

• Do wider webs of the 2 mm laser-cut bracket stay feasible on fine meshes when the slenderness rule is relaxed?With the assumed slenderness limit raised from 8 to 12.5, gauge-2 bracket webs of 16–17 mm and wider are feasible at h = 1.5, 1.0 and 0.75 mm; refinement from 1.5 to 1.0 mm moves the lightest feasible width up 0.5 mm (about 1 g, 3%); stylised, preliminary.
• Do the isolated feasible pockets of the 2 mm laser-cut bracket survive mesh refinement?The isolated feasible pockets below w = 15 mm at the 2 mm laser-cut gauge vanish at 2.0 and 1.5 mm element size, and the smallest feasible w moves up (14.4 to 15.6 mm at r = 14 mm); stylised, preliminary.
• Is the narrow 2 mm laser-cut bracket region a mesh artefact?The narrow 2 mm laser-cut bracket region is a mesh effect: all 39 designs feasible at h = 2.5 mm fail the stress limit at h ≤ 1.5 mm (peak 1.09–1.27× higher, still rising at 0.75 mm); stylised, negative for the search mesh.
• Does a patch-averaged stress make the 2 mm laser-cut bracket region mesh-independent?A 3 mm patch-averaged stress converges with the mesh (≤2.2% change from h = 1.0 to 0.75 mm) where the centroid peak does not, and all 39 gauge-2 designs stay feasible; stylised, preliminary.
• Does the peak stress at the fillet tangent point of the L-bracket converge under graded mesh refinement?Does the L-bracket's peak stress at the fillet tangent point converge under graded mesh refinement? Yes for four designs: it flattens at 1.09–1.14× its 1.5 mm value (0.0–1.1% change over the last 4× refinement down to 0.025 mm), so the 2 mm region's mesh dependence is a resolution effect; the 16/15/2 design is marginally over 100 MPa when converged; stylised 2D, no reference solution.
• Is the least-mass laser-cut bracket the same on coarse and fine meshes under a patch-averaged stress rule?Under a 3 mm patch-averaged stress rule the least-mass laser-cut bracket is the same on a 2.5 mm and a 1.0 mm mesh (gauge 2: 32.31 vs 32.33 g), while the centroid-peak rule leaves no feasible gauge-2 design on the fine mesh; the patch value hardly sees the fillet radius; stylised, preliminary.

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Produced with AI assistance (Claude). Results are from the code in this repository and are simulated or stylised unless the abstract says otherwise; nothing here implies affiliation with or endorsement by any lab, researcher or company cited. MIT licensed.