Van Door SW Simulation

[pietro_lopo]

Hi guys,

As mentioned in the title, I am performing a verification on the tailgate of a van.

My model is currently very simple—it consists only of the tailgate with four hinges located at the bottom. On the side, I have created a cylindrical pocket, which is meant to represent the housing for the pin of the upright that locks the tailgate.

My GOAL is to obtain the reaction forces at the four hinges and at the two pins of the uprights, following the application of a normal load of 8000 N, applied to 75% of the tailgate's surface. (I have attached an image of the model to make everything clearer.)


CONSTRAINTS I have currently set:
 

4 Fixed Hinges at the cylindrical surfaces of the four hinges (A B C D).

2 Constraints on cylindrical faces that prevent translation in the load direction at the cylindrical surfaces of the upright pin housings (F E)

With this setup, my model returns reaction forces almost exclusively along the Z-axis (which corresponds to the load direction).

However, after discussing with SolidWorks support, I was advised to constrain the pin housings of the uprights using a "bearing constraint".

With this setup, the bottom hinges now show significant vertical reaction forces, which makes sense and aligns with what I would expect in reality. However, what concerns me is that the resultant force along the Y-axis is far from zero.





What do you recommend? Is the bearing constraint more realistic?