Uniaxial Compression Test of Honeycomb Using Only an Orphan Mesh 2

[StevenH72]

Firstly, I have very little Abaqus experience. I have generated a relatively large mesh (~1.2M hex elements) using a program other than Abaqus and have imported it to Abaqus CAE. I now wish to perform a simple uniaxial compression test to obtain the stress-strain curve (elastic-plastic); however, I am struggling to apply BCs & loads etc. I seem to be able to apply them to individual nodes but there are to many to select them all manually. Is it possible to achieve my desired outcome using an orphan mesh alone (without geometry)? If so, any assistance would be greatly appreciated. Or if not, please can someone advise on how to proceed?

The attached image shows a single cell of the honeycomb, the full structure has 8x8 cells. I wish to apply the compressive load in the z-direction (whilst constraining the opposite face in the z-direction).

Thanks

 

[Dave442]

If you are applying the same BC to multiple nodes you should create a node set and apply the BC to the set. You can create node sets in the part/assembly modules (Tools -> Set -> Create). When creating node sets you can select nodes individually, by angle or by feature edge.

 

[StevenH72]

Hi Dave,
The problem I'm having when creating the node set is that there are no features (since there is only an orphan mesh so no geometry), this makes selecting the nodes to include in the set very tedious.

 

[Mustaine3]

The problem is, that you are not familiar with the selection methods in A/CAE. Especially the angle method would help here a lot. Take a look into the A/CAE Manual 6.2 Selecting objects within the current viewport

 

[StevenH72]

Hi Mustaine,
Thanks, this has helped quite a lot - I still need to select each honeycomb cell individually, but it is a vast improvement over having to select each node!

 

[Dave442]

Do you need to mesh your part with solid elements?

Can you use shells and/or exploit symmetry to simplify your problem significantly?

 

[cooken]

Are the nodes in the same plane or do they have known geometry (coordinates)?

You could try using the python getByBoundingBox() method or similar.

 

[IceBreakerSours]

View the model X-Z or Y-Z view and use area select to select the nodes. Or, use the angle feature as mentioned above to select the nodes on a face. Finally, if the nodes on which BCs need to be specified have some regularity in their coordinates and you are having a hard time figuring out any other way using /CAE, then you can write a script to create a node set for those nodes and specify the BC on the node set.

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