An overview of the plane strain method

- [Instructor] So in this video, we're going to look…at the background to plane strain analysis.…The objective of plane strain analysis is to take…a solid 3D object and then slice it…in some plane to give us a 2D representation.…Now we have some theory which allows us…to mathematically deal with that situation.…So again to replace the full 3D analysis…with a 2D analysis with a typical cross section.…The motivation is that the analysis is much faster…and cheaper if we're using the 2D plane strain analysis.…

We can really afford to saturate this 2D mesh…with for example the fillet radius around in here.…We can really put lots and lots of elements in there.…We get a very good value for this stress concentration.…If we try and do that with a 3D element,…then we're up against the cost of running 3D model…which gets very expensive.…So it's cheap, very effective.…Redesign and analysis is also much quicker.…It's much easier to take this sketch,…reestablish new configuration without worrying…about all the detail of the 3D object.…