HI, All, I am new to Pro/Mechani

[puzha518]

HI, All,

I am new to Pro/Mechanica. I am trying a simple practice problem with composite shell elements.

I have a solid thin plate. Since I can not use "shell pair" as I can not assigned laminate property to a "Shell pair", I try to use the just the top surface. I assign the laminate property to the top surface. NOw when I try to mesh the surface, I always get the solid mesh over the solid plate rather than the shell element on the surface I need. Under the "Mesh" menu, I only see "Solid" or "Boundary" as options, with no options such as "surface" or "quilt". Anybody has any idea? Thanks a lot.

 

[MeshNinja]

You need to create a 2D surface and mesh on that rather than the face of a solid.

 

[brep]

You should first create the shell pair (to compress the opposing solid faces onto a single shell). You can then create a shell property (it's a separate menu item) and the assign a simple thickness, or if you use the Advanced tab you can assign a composite layup, or even type in a laminate stiffness matrix (ABD) directly. You can assign this shell property to the shell pair. In fact if you assign the shell property to the solid surface first, and then do the shell pair compression, the property will be transferred onto the compressed shell. It's really quite simple.

I know this was posted a long time ago, but this is such an easy and powerful thing to do in Creo Simulate that others should know about it!