DanRail
Structural
- Jan 2, 2007
- 11
I typically use short beam elements to simulate bolted connections, not for in-depth analysis of the connection, but to determine the large scale stresses in the structure.
Beam4 or Beam44 elements connected to Shell63 elements.
Here's the kicker. I just had a situation where I needed to extract the torsion load in a "bolt". The NFOR command will do this.
I found that the beam elements were NOT transmitting torsion between the plates! I built a simple model for verification and indeed the beam elements were NOT transmitting torsion. We are using older versions of Ansys. This situation appears both in rev 6.1 and rev 8.1
Has anyone else run into this? and how did you get around it? One workaround is to place short beams on the surfaces of the shell elements connected to the short beam element. I don't want to have to do this since I have hundreds of these short beams in a model.
Beam4 or Beam44 elements connected to Shell63 elements.
Here's the kicker. I just had a situation where I needed to extract the torsion load in a "bolt". The NFOR command will do this.
I found that the beam elements were NOT transmitting torsion between the plates! I built a simple model for verification and indeed the beam elements were NOT transmitting torsion. We are using older versions of Ansys. This situation appears both in rev 6.1 and rev 8.1
Has anyone else run into this? and how did you get around it? One workaround is to place short beams on the surfaces of the shell elements connected to the short beam element. I don't want to have to do this since I have hundreds of these short beams in a model.