Abaqus Shell Thickness and Meshing Question?

[structvt]

I am modeling a cold form steel shell element in Abaqus and I have to apply different thicknesses to it. My question is how does Abaqus apply the thickness? What I mean is does it extrude half the total thickness on each side of the element or extrude the full thickness in one direction? And can it be specified?

I am also going to be using S9R5 meshing and I have read up online that CAE can do ti but you have to bring up FEMGEN in CAE to actually apply that meshing to it since its not a typical mesh option. I was just wondering if anybody has had experience with this and knows how to get FEMGEN to come up and mesh it.

 

[xerf]

I believe by default the reference surface is the midsurface, i.e. the tickness h extends h/2 in each side.
However, the user can specify the offset for the reference surface.

You should look at Shell section in the documentation. If I am not mistaken you can even apply different thickness at each node if necessary.

Meshing capabilities of Abaqus/CAE are pretty good, unless you are importing some complicated geometry from other CAD software.

 

[johnhors]

structvt, what is "FEMGEN in CAE"?

http://www.Roshaz.com

 

[structvt]

http://www.princeton.edu/~dynaflow/femgv/manuals/preabaq/node16.htm

This is where I found FEMGEN. I believe it involves editing the input files, however I cannot find where in the input files to actually edit the stuff.

 

[johnhors]

structvt,

This web page is refering to the old FEMGEN software originally written in Norway in the late 70's and later marketed by Fegs Ltd and by FEMSYS (now part of Diana TNO).

It is not part of Abaqus/CAE.

http://www.Roshaz.com

 

[structvt]

Ok so if it is not apart of Abaqus/CAE anymore. How do you mesh with a S9R5 mesh then because I do not have access to FEMSYS.

 

[johnhors]

It never was part of Abaqus/CAE.

You could use CAE to mesh with S8R5 elements, then write a program to read the input file produced by CAE and insert nodes in the middle of each S8R5 element to create the S9R5 elements.

http://www.Roshaz.com