Elastic foundation on Nastran/PAtran

[kevin1977]

Hello,

I'm beginning to work with Patran/Nastran and I'm trying to model the vibration of a big structure over an elastic foundation (there are hundreds of mesh nodes in the structure base).

Probably because I'm a new user, the only approach I know is to use hundreds of 0D CELAST element (springs conected to the ground and to the structure), but this needs to entering hundreds of spring elements, and it needs a lot of time and patience.

Do you know if there is a better approach for this foundation model?

Thanks in advance,

Kevin

 

[andrew1970]

Hi..

I used to work with Patran 2005. I don't know which version you use but there is an "utilities" menu (not installed by dfault). Under the utilities menu there is an option to create beam, spring or gap elements by choosing two groups. You have to group the base of the machine nodes and then copy then with an offset option (the length of your springs). Use Group operations.

Now you should have two groups of nodes. With the show/noshow select the two groups and you got it.

If you don't have the utilities menu installed you can browse the web how to do it.

Regards

Andrew