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.
Keywords—Hoses, validation, deformations.
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