another aspect that I forgot, is that NASTRAN and MSC products in general offer the most comprehensive solution for composites, including laminate modeler, and it's integration with compro, and fibersim.
and you know about composites.. they are the present/future :)
it's all a question of price/performance.
small engineering companies have no need in getting the whole blown nastran package, with MARC and DYTRAN, or getting nastran MD.
On the other hand, they are offering MSC/FEA and MSC/AFEA for a price similar to the one of neinastran/femap, and they...
Assuming this is NOT related to tires, intuitively the area of friction contact is related to the strength of the friction force. However, this is incorrect.
Assume you have a force of 100N acting on 4 feet of a chair. These feet have a small surface area, of 100mm^2. The total pressure is...
ANSYS is not a good choice for cad modeler.
any other program would be better, and CATIA is the top.
I use CATIA for preparing the surfaces for the model to be meshed and analyzed.
However, catia has a very steep learning curve, and without proper learning materials, you will get lost very fast.
The problem with large defomations is that a non linear material needs to be used to properly simulate the deformation. In your case an elasto-plastic material will be required. I'm assuming a non linear analysis is executed.
The best analytic solutions are available for simple beam cases...
The 300 node version is better for learning then the solidworks fusion variant. the SW variant has limited element selection, no real shell elements, and is VERY limited in meshing capabilities.
RBE2 is an infinitely stiff element, with dependent and independent nodes.
RBAR has only 2 nodes, so it's not as useful if you want to model a bolt, or attach with multiple nodes.
you can simulate an RBE2 with RBAR elements, but each of them has it's own use.
I recommend getting the course notes for the msc courses, they are relatively cheap and very informative.
this way you can feel you are taking the course, without the huge cost of it.