【正文】
igid surface elements. Boundary Conditions Both springs were assumed to be fully restrained at their base to simulate a rigid plastic housing. An enforced displacement in the xdirection was applied to the ball. The ball wasfully restrained in all rotational and translational directions with the exception of the xdirection translation. Boundary conditions for the springs and ball are shown in Figure 2. DISCUSSION Typical results of interest for an electromechanical sensor would be the deflected shape of the springs, the forcedisplacement response of the sensor, and the stress levels in the springs. Results from an analysis of the electromechanical sensor shown in Figure 2 will be used as Figure 3. Electromechanical sensor deflected shape. an example for this paper. The deflected shape of this sensor is shown in Figure 3 for full ball travel. Looking at the deflected shape of the springs can provide insight into the performance of the sensor as well as aid in the design of the sensor housing. Stresses in the springs are important results in this analysis to ensure stress levels in the springs are at acceptable levels. Desired ponents of stress can be examined through various means including color contour plots. One of the most important results from the analysis is the forcedisplacement response for the sensor shown in Figure 4. From this forcedisplacement response, the force required to push spring1 into contact with spring2 can readily be determined. This force requirement can be used with a given acceleration to determine the mass required for the ball. Based on these results, one or more variations of several variables such as spring width, spring thickness, ball diameter, and ball material can be updated until the forcedisplacement requirements are achieved within a desired accuracy. A prototype of the sensor shown in Figure 2 was constructed and tested to determine its actual forcedisplacement response. Figure 4 shows the MSC/ABAQUS results along with the experimental results for the forcedisplacement response of the sensor. There was an excellent correlation between finite element and experimental results for this sensor as well as Figure 4. Electromechanical sensor forcedisplacementresponse. for several other sensors examined. Table 1 shows the difference in percent between finite element and experimental results including force at preload on spring1, force at spring1tospring2 contact, and force at full ball travel for two sensor configurations. Sensor A in Table 1 is shown in Figure 1. Sensor B in Table 1 is based on the sensor shown in Figure 2. The sensor model analyzed in this paper was also analyzed with parabolic quadrilateral and bar elements to ensure convergence of the solution. Forcedisplacement results converged to less than 1% using linear elements. The stresses in the springs for this sensor converged to within 10% for the linear elements. The parabolic elements increased solve time by more than an order of magnitude over the linear elements. With more plex spring shapes, a denser linear mesh or parabolic elements used locally in areas of stress concentrat