I am such a wonk. I think this FEA analysis is really cool. It is also surprising. Based on what Andrew and Marcus have posted, it also appears that sometimes "less is more" and a lighter thing can also be a stronger thing.
When I modified the Haynes Roadster for my 3.8L V6 donor and the 300 HP I expect to eventually have, I really had to use some common sense knowledge (to increase strength go up in section size or gauge or both) plus applying lessons learned in the Linton analysis, the Aussie mods plus some other improvements done by others. It's fundamentally the same design, but more substantial and consequently heavier (image attached). I know I could have done a better job and have a lighter design if I'd had a good FEA tool to use when doing the modifications.
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SN95-Mustang-Locost-Roadster-1.jpg
After seeing the results here and poking around the GRAPE and LISA sites, I found LISA accepts STEP files. I had a STEP file for my final chassis as a single part, so I downloaded LISA and loaded my STEP model in not really knowing what I'd get. Unfortunately, in STEP, it does not appear as a single part and there are discontinuities and it fails to mesh. It's a huge model, so I'm not too surprised. A simple node-based model as has been posted here would probably be much better anyway, but I no longer have a license for the software used to design the chassis and can't recover all the X,Y,Z points of the nodes. That's too bad because all the junctions of members are at the intersection of the section centroids for the most part and would be pretty simple.
However, LISA does load and mesh simpler components and does a really cool job of meshing some complex parts. Here is the original Haynes Roadster pedal box meshed by LISA from a STEP file and a separate rendering of it so people can get clear on the geometry, which is hard to see just from the LISA mesh file. This is a 3D, volume mesh.
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LISA-Pedal-Box.jpg
Part Rendered.
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Pedal-Box-Image.jpg
I know enough to know the mesh above is much more complicated than it needs to be for this simple part. But the point is you can get an immediate model for use and analyzing by loading STEP files in LISA. Almost every 3D modeling program can output to STEP, so you get something to analyze for almost nothing when you're designing. I would definitely like to use LISA for analyzing many Locost components that I'm designing subsequently. Besides the chassis itself, there are many elements like the control arms, mounting brackets, pedal assemblies and so on that could benefit from basic FEA analysis.
Cheers,