Quick replacement for CWELD element type

[trainguy]

All,

I am trying to run a model prepared for Msc Nastran which has many CWELD elements. My in-house solver is NeiNastran, which doesn't seem to recognize CWELD elements.

Any idea what type of element I should change to for this to run? I was hoping for something very similar and I am not too concerned with results close to these elements, just global displacements of the general structure (passenger railcar)

Thanks in advance...

tg

 

[kalinka]

Which version do you using? NEi Nastran has supported CWELD elements since 2003. Also, Automated Surface Contact Generation (ASCG) is a good option for finding the solution.

 

[irq]

If you can not use a CWELD I recommend to try a stiff element: RBE2 instead.

At the moment I have the similar issue - I want to replace RBE2 and I am thinking about CWELD. The reason is that I see advantages in CWELD to connect two disimilar meshes without moving of the nodes to make proper connection (nodes need to be vertically aligned). For CWELD we can use patch connection. I have never check the difference in translational/rotational forces generated by RBE2/CWELD. If someone here already performed a verification what are the differences between them in term of a simply approximation of the rough fastener connection, please share share your experience. Can we replace them having similar results?

Irq