Can you explain this a bit? I'm still pretty green when it comes to stress points and all that junk.
Sure. Those plots are pretty basic. I modeled them in SolidWorks (3D modeling program) and applied a material to them. That way SolidWorks knows all of the mechanical properties of the material (tensile-yield-elongation, density, poisson's ratio, etc).
Then I did a 'Study' in Simulation. Simulation is a FEA (Finite Element Analysis) program that is integrated into SolidWorks. It's called Finite Element because it breaks the part up into a finite number of nodes, then performs calculations at those nodes (stress, strain, deformation, etc). You essentially select how many nodes there are by how you mesh the model (jargon - I know). The more nodes, the more accurate; but the longer it takes to calculate a solution. More isn't always better. The key is to mesh the model such that you obtain an accurate answer in the shortest amount of time.
For this particular Simulation, I placed a 'fixed' constraint on the flat plate that will be attached to my frame. That made it so that plate wouldn't move when I put a load on the part.
Then I placed a 2000lb vertical load at the end of the part, simulating close to 1/2 the weight of my truck pushing up at that location (essentially 1/2 of my truck sitting on my slider, but my slider only being supported by one 'support').
For this analysis, the amount of load isn't as critical as the comparison of the results. I wanted to make sure my new design was stronger than my old design; so I placed both the new and old design under the same loading conditions.
Simulation will tell you pretty much anything you want to know (stresses, strains, and displacements in any direction and at any point), but for this study I only looked at displacement. I had SolidWorks tell me the location and the value of the maximum displacement under these conditions.
Of course, the max displacement happens at the end of the support, where the load is applied. I just looked at these values and found that the new support will deform 28% less than the old design under these conditions. The new support is lighter too, so it's an all around win.
The colors depict the severity of the deformation. Red = more. Blue = almost none. The visual deformation that you see is an exaggeration of the real world deformation, scaled by a value that you input (or it does it automatically if you want it to). If I looked at the actual deformation, it would hardly be noticeable. You would just see the colors.
If this were a stress plot, the colors would depict areas of higher stress. Red = more stress. Blue = almost no stress. You can see that in the pics where I analyzed the main members of the slider.
I welded the reinforcement strap on the bottom of one of the sliders yesterday, and it warped it pretty good. I'm researching thermal straightening to see if I can pull it back straight.