ANSYS Modeling - Spaceclaim - Show Contact

[MWolf707]

Hello

I am working with ANSYS suite and am preparing a model in Spaceclaim for analysis in Ansys Mechanical. My model is of beam and shell types and I am having some issues with beam contact. There seems to be an inconsistency where some of my connections are displaying both a "Non-Shared Beam End" And a "Beam Junction". I have multiple of these connections and while some are showing only "Beam Junction" some are indicating Both.

Another thing I have found is that if I stop showing my shells elements (i.e. Hide in Structure Tree) The free beam ends also change and will only show "Beam Junctions".

 

[L_K]

You could try changing the share topology in different levels of the tree (SYS, Model, Shells, Beams).
You could also try to put "Shells" and "Beams" directly under SYS.

Is the model working properly in Mechanical?

I see you have extracted beams in the model. So you have extracted them of solid bodies? Did you make
sure that between those solid bodies there was no links (from CAD model)?

 

[MWolf707]

L_K

Thanks for the response & suggestions.

I see you have extracted beams in the model. So you have extracted them of solid bodies? Did you make
sure that between those solid bodies there was no links (from CAD model)?

I did extract the beams from a solid model. The model was imported via a .STP file with a lot of additional features. I used spaceclaim to clean the geometry first. All the old solid bodies were then just deleted. I am not sure what you mean by "Links" or how to check this.

Is the model working properly in Mechanical?

Actually, it does seem to be working fine in Mechanical. Despite Spaceclaim indicating that some of the beam-to-shell connections had No contact, and some beam-to-beam connections displayed both No contact and Contact, everything appears to be moving together and not separating, indicating nothing was wrong. The deformation and force results on the "weird" connections matched the ones that seemed to be to fine. Not sure if this means this points to a graphical error in Spaceclaim or what

You could try changing the share topology in different levels of the tree (SYS, Model, Shells, Beams).
You could also try to put "Shells" and "Beams" directly under SYS.

Weird. I tried messing with this. Past images and results were found when everything in the structure tree was set to "Share".
Per your advice I moved both my "Shells" Component and "Beams" Component directly under SYS*, while keeping all Share Topology settings to "Share". Found no Change... It still technically worked but in Spaceclaim it still showed weird contact issues.

However, When I changed the SYS* Share Topology settings to groups, I found that the weird inconstencies went away. ( SEE IMAGE). As you can see, the odd places where both "Free End" And "Beam Junction" went away. However, so did all my connections between the beams and the shells. I expected that to happen though, because the share topology was set to groups not share. I sent this to Mechanical and it confirmed that is was not connected to the shells at all.

Okay super weird part, maybe find the culprit. SYS* Share Topology set to "Share". "Shells" Share Topology set to "Share". "Beams" share topology set to "Group".
SEE IMAGE. Here, the 3 beam-to-shell contacts that I was originally have problems with in spaceclaim have now changed color and act like those beams arent even beams?? Whats going on.

 

[MWolf707]

Okay, found something else... Those beams are set to "RIGID : TRUE" in Spaceclaim.. Am changing it and will update the post.

 

[L_K]

By link I mean are there similar (copies of each other parts) in CAD model? Maybe in linear or
some other pattern. Do the changes appear in other bodies if you change one of them? Or delete
one of them? If so I would recommend removing those links before any beam or other operations.

I agree (I have also noticed this) your last try is not something SC likes (grouped part inside shared part).
I would avoid this altogether.

As you mentioned, it appears to be a graphical "bug" in SpaceClaim. I recommend informing your local
ansys support of the problem.