Do the isolated feasible pockets of the 2 mm laser-cut bracket survive mesh refinement?

What it found

A small mesh-refinement scan (stylised, preliminary). Scanning web width in 0.1 mm steps at four fillet radii on 2.5, 2.0 and 1.5 mm meshes, the isolated feasible widths below 15.4 mm seen on the 2.5 mm mesh are absent at 1.5 mm, and the smallest feasible width rises from about 14.4–14.8 to 15.6–15.7 mm. This is consistent with the lighter search group being a coarse-mesh artefact, but the boundary was still moving, so convergence is not shown. No search was rerun on the finer meshes. Simulated only.

A figure from its own output

Paper, code and results

• README and method
• Experiments and results
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More in Simulation-first design

• Does the feasible boundary of the 2 mm laser-cut bracket converge when the mesh is refined to 0.5 mm?On meshes of 1.0 and 0.5 mm no width in the usable 15.0–16.0 mm window of the gauge-2 bracket scan is feasible (one point at 0.75 mm), and the lowest peak stress rises 11–14% from 1.5 to 0.5 mm; negative, stylised, preliminary.
• Does the 1.5 mm bracket clear buckling when the whole L is one 3D body with a flexible corner?The whole 1.5 mm L-bracket as one 3D body clears the buckling floor under the design load (factor 4.01 vs closed-form 3.47) but not with the load reversed (2.25, below 3); sharp corner, ideal sheet, preliminary.
• How wide must the 1.5 mm L-bracket be to clear the buckling floor when the load is reversed?Widening the 1.5 mm L-bracket web from 18.4 to about 22.6 mm lifts the reversed-load buckling factor from 2.27 to the floor of 3, at +5.9 g (+19%) plate mass; buckling only, sharp corner, ideal sheet, preliminary.
• Do the reversed-load buckling widths of the L-bracket change with more element layers through the thickness?More element layers through the thickness (1 to 4) move the L-bracket's reversed-load buckling factor by at most 1.2% and the width needed for the floor of 3 by at most 0.07 mm at 1.5 to 3.0 mm gauges, so the thicker-sheet designs of simdesign-revgauge stand; coarse in-plane mesh, sharp corner, ideal sheet, preliminary.
• Do the reversed-load buckling-limited L-bracket designs also pass the forward-load buckling, stress and deflection checks?Under the forward 100 N load the four reversed-load buckling-limited L-brackets all clear buckling (factor 4.7 to 5.6), but only the 1.5 mm design also meets the 100 MPa and 4 mm limits; the 2.5 and 3.0 mm designs fail by 2 to 8 times, and the 2.0 mm design passes only on the coarse mesh (95.7 vs 144.9 MPa finer). Stylised.
• Is a thicker sheet lighter than a wider 1.5 mm web for clearing the reversed-load buckling floor?At the reversed-load buckling floor of 3, a 2 mm sheet needs a web of about 11.8 mm and weighs 27.5 g against 36.6 g for 1.5 mm at 22.6 mm; 2.5 mm gives 20.5 g; buckling only, one element layer through the thickness, 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.