How to avoid a huge number of constraints?

[Mohamed Zied]

Hi,

I am building a bridge model that contains 6 girders and many transversal elements. I connected them using Tie constraints as you can see in the attached picture. I uploaded a picture of the model that represents only half of the bridge (3 girders), but still, at this stage, I have 96 tie constraints. When I tried to run my model, I had errors related to convergence. I heard that a huge number of tie constraints cause divergence in the analysis. Is that true? And what do you recommend to connect this huge number of parts?

Thank you in advance.

 

[FEA way]

Maybe some of these components could be created as a single part or merged in the assembly module.

 

[Mustaine3]

A large number of tie constraints is no problem. They are built-in during the datacheck and so during the analysis a node is either tied or not. This is not checked and changed during the analysis again.

Open the .odb after the datacheck or analysis and use the Display Group dialog to check what nodes are tied.