Learning Forum

[eibanez]

Hi all,

I was trying to understand in more detail how Ansys calculates averaged and unaveraged stress so I exported the data and picked a random node as example to look at. 

To my surprise, when exporting unaveraged stress data, the same node ID 16343 instead of showing a single value for stress shows 4 different values: within the same element 25010 shows 2 different values, and for its neighbouring element 28912 shows 2 further values.

I then created a named selection that shows stress for the single #16343 node and the values shown by the solver are even different.

I'm very confused by this, can anyone shed some light on why these values are all different? I attached a screenshot with all the data

Thanks

Emiliano

 

 

 

[Akshay Maniyar]

Hi,

Calculation of averaged and unaveraged stress is based on the finite element method. When you see multiple stress values for a single node, it's because each element connected to that node has its own stress value. In the case of unaveraged stress, ANSYS reports the stress value of each element at the shared node. This is why you see different values for the same node when you export unaveraged stress data.

On the other hand, averaged stress is calculated by taking an average of the stress values of all elements connected to a particular node. This is why you see a single value when you export averaged stress data. The averaging process makes the stress contour plots smoother and easier to interpret, but it may also result in a loss of peak stress values.

Please check the below link for more details.

Understanding Averaged and Unaveraged Contour Results (ansys.com)

Thanks,

Akshay Maniyar