Fillet (mechanics)
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In mechanical engineering, a fillet (pronounced ['fɪlɪt]) is a concave easing of an interior corner of a part design. A chamfer is the opposite of a fillet, being a convex easing of an exterior corner.
[edit] Applications
- Stress concentration is a problem of load-bearing mechanical parts which is reduced by employing fillets on points and lines of expected high stress. These features effectively make the parts more durable and capable of bearing larger loads.
- For considerations in aerodynamics, fillets are employed to reduce interference drag where aircraft components such as wings, struts, and other surfaces meet one another.
- For manufacturing, concave corners are sometimes filleted to allow the use of round-tipped end mills to cut out an area of a material. This has a cycle time benefit if the round mill is simultaneously being used to mill complex curved surfaces.
[edit] Design process
Fillets can be quickly designed onto parts using 3d solid modeling engineering CAD software by invoking the function and picking edges of interest. Once these features are included in the CAD design of a part, they are often manufactured automatically using computer-numerical control.
Different packages use different names for the same operations. Autodesk Inventor and Solidworks refer to both concave and convex rounded edges as fillets, while referring to angled cuts of edges and concave corners as chamfers. Unigraphics refers to concave and convex rounded edges as blends. Pro/Engineer refers to rounded edges simply as rounds. Other 3D solid modeling software programs outside of engineering, such as gameSpace, have similar functions.
Although a smooth edge connecting two simple flat features is generally simple for a computer to create and fast for a human user to specify, heavy use of fillets on complex geometry can overwhelm even the best CAD software. Experienced users of solid modeling software minimize the occurrence of these problems by planning ahead and maximizing their use of dimensioned sketches to predefine their curved surfaces, rather than using fillets.
