Attaching Plate Elements to Beam Elements

[Cheyne]

I'm trying to roughly connect a plate that sits on top of tubes that lie under the plate, around it's perimeter. The tubes are modeled as beam elements...

I get fatal errors when I use rigid beam elements.

What is the proper method to attach plate elements to beam elements without coinciding nodes?

See attached pics showing geometry with and without thickness.

Thanks in advance!

http://www.martinezandturek.com

 

[Cheyne]

Forgot to attach the pics...

www.martinezandturek.com

 

[Cheyne]

Another pic...

www.martinezandturek.com

 

[rb1957]

not sure why your RBEs wouldn't work ... check your dependent and independent nodes ...

why don't you want co-incident nodes ? if RBEs aren't doing it for you then ...

1) common nodes (fully welded, and you can see the moment being transferred; and you can release a freedom if you want to)

2) co-incident nodes joined by a CBUSH spring element (so you can control the stiffness of the differenet loadpaths).

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[Cheyne]

Thanks!

http://www.martinezandturek.com

 

[Cheyne]

rb1957,

It works! You nailed it when you said to check my independent and dependent nodes...

I originally thought that, because my load path went through my plate and to the beams, that the beams were DEPENDENT on the plate. I switched my DEPENDENT nodes to the ones belonging to the plate, and INDEPENDENT belonging to the beams, and it works fine.

With that said, how is the DEPENDENT and INDEPENDENT nodes determined? Obviously, my intuition fails me.

Apologize for such elementary questions...

http://www.martinezandturek.com

 

[rb1957]

the loads/stresses/strains of independent node are dependent on the dependent nodes. as i understand it, the independent row and column in the stiffness matrix is replaced by a function based on the dependent nodes.

Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati