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By:

Huang Junming 660968587

Charles Ng 660968599

Alvin Teo 660968600

͞Major Project͟

MANE 4240

Introduction to Finite Elements

Lecturer: Professor Suvranu De

Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

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The guitar is one of the most-played instruments in the world today due
to its portability and versatility. It has been around for hundreds of
years, way before tools existed to enable measurement of material
properties. Today͛s guitars, however, are more sophisticated than they
might look, with the different construction styles, the various
materials used for the body and the strings, the different forms of
reinforcing structure within the body and even the electronics within
the guitar.

Today͛s steel-stringed guitars employ a variety of bracing located

behind the soundboard. A more popular form is the ͚X͛-Bracing, where
two main struts are placed behind in an X-shape, with their intersection right under the
soundhole. Other forms of bracing include ͚A͛-bracing and fan-bracing etc. These bracings help
to strengthen the soundboard and only became popular in the 1840s. The usage of bracings has
enabled guitars to be made of thinner wood and also allowed for these woods to be arched,
producing a larger sound and better sound projection.In addition, bracing contributes greatly to
the durability of a guitar. The guitar, being a portable instrument, tends to travel frequently
with their owners and it is inevitable that they will receive some knocks as well as pressure in
usage or transit. A braced structure allows the guitar to be more rigid and thereby withstand
higher pressures on its surfaces.

However, the presence of these struts in itself alters the sound produced by the guitar. Ideally
(and subjectively), the number (and the surface area) of these struts should be minimized for an
unimpeded sound yet at the same time adding enough strength to the guitar. Our project seeks
to explore the forces the strings exert on the guitar soundboard to understand the amount of
strengthening required.

Other forms of strengthening the structure of course would include the choice of wood as well
as the orientation of the laminates if cheaper plywood were used.

An interesting note about guitar strings is that the various strings in the guitar are of varying
thickness. This is so that each of these strings exerts a similar amount of stress on the bridge pin
while producing their different tones.


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In this project we seek to analyze the stresses that the strings exert on an un-
strengthened guitar soundboard. To do so, we built a Computer-Aided Design
model with the software Abaqus, as shown in figure 2.

It is important that soundboards are kept thin to

enhance sound projection. Also, by having a thinner
soundboard, the body of the guitar can be made to
have a larger hollow volume that produces louder
sounds. There are also weight advantages to using
thinner materials for a highly portable instrument.
However, it is obvious that a thin material would
have lower strength and durability. This is where the
bracings play an important role in maintaining the
strength of the thinner material.

Only the soundboard was modeled since the rest of the parts of the guitar could
be considered as the boundary conditions on the soundboard. The tensile forces
from the strings would be modeled to go through the six bridge pins on the guitar.

We have specifically chosen a solid-top soundboard. That is, the guitar is made
not out of laminated plywood but from a single material, with the grains running
parallel to the strings.

Continuing on the Abaqus software, we then proceeded to include the boundary

conditions along the sides of the soundboard and the 6 string forces, before
generating the mesh and outputting the results.

The Abaqus software was chosen for both the modeling and finite-element
analysis since it would ensure a smooth transition between both steps for our
project. Furthermore, since the geometry we require was not very complex, the
Abaqus software was more than enough for our requirements.