Solid and Shell Mesh

[tkultra]

I am somewhat new to ANSYS. I am working on a problem in workbench that involves two plates joined by a bar in the center. I modeled the parts in Pro/E and sent them oer to simulation. Can someone tell me how to mesh the plates as a shell and the bar as a solid? Thanks

tkultra

 

[cbrn]

Hi,
I fear you have chosen the wrong way from the start: WB will recognize the presence of volumes and thus mesh them with solid elements.
You still have the possibility to import it in Classical: there, you have full choice on which face / surface to use, you can add auxiliary geometry in order to create a bar where you need, and so on.
Though I haven't done a "mixed-element" analysis in WB, it should work like that:
- volumes are meshed with solid elements
- wireframe ("pure-lines") is meshed with beams (don't remember how you take into account the section...)
- surfaces are meshed with shells
You have to make sure that you select the mixed-geometry import options.
You also have to pay attention to the DOFs compatibility between different element types (beams with shells should work OK because they generally both have 6 DOFs/node, while shells with solids can become very tricky...).
I seem to remember that the Help section about Meshing in Simulation has a pretty good description of this matter.

Regards

 

[tkultra]

Thanks. I will take a look into things and see what I can figure out. I forgot about the mixed elements option. Hopefully that can put me on the right track.

tkultra