Shell to solid bolted connection

[acga]

Hi everyone,

I'm currently working on a FEM model (Nastran) that due to geometrical reasons must have both shell and solid elements.
I must create several bolted connections between shell-solid and my intention is purely to transfer loads between them. Stress distribution around the bolted area is not important.

My first approach was to connect a node from the shell and another from the solid element through and RBE2 element, where the dependant and independant grids depend on the load path (in some cases it's from shell-to-solid and in others the otherway around). However, with this approach bending moment is not transferred from shell-to-solid and so I think results may not be accurate.
Is there any other method to effectively transfer load from shell-to-solid and vice-versa?

Thanks!
acga

 

[crostolo]

Hi acga,

nodes of solid elements have "only" 3 d.o.f. rather nodes of shell elements have 5. You should connect the RBE2 with at least 2 solid elements, in order to transfer the bending moments of the plate elements.

 

[Zadrobu]

The chapter "How Do I Attach Plate and Bar Elements to Solid Elements" of this document (starting at page 69) gives some useful advice.

 

[acga]

Thanks for both answers!
I ended up modelling the bolted connections through several RBE2s and from the results it seems to be correctly transfering all the load from one part to the other.

 

[cyt4]

you might want to search for rutman fasteners.it is a solid modelling technique. initial modelling time saves you a lot of computational time.

https://web.mscsoftware.com/events/vpd2007/na/presentations/tech_papers/8.pdf