Learning Forum

[KristofVC]

Hey all,I have generated a shell and beam mesh in Ansys Workbench, and would like to include the shape functions that are used for the interpolation by the solver in my final report . I have BEAM188 elements and SHELL181 elements. The Theory Reference I found online showed that there are different options for shape functions for BEAM188 (linear, quadratic, cubic). However, I do not find a way to extract the type that is actually used from the program. Can anyone help me with this?nFrom the Input File i have copied the following for the BEAM188 elements:net,1073,188nkeyo,1073,3,2neblock,19,solid,,8n(19i9)n1072   1072   1072   1072    0    0    0    0    3    0  25126   6411   6412  22521nI'm guessing that the second line in this set of commands sets the shape functions, but I don't understand exactly what it says. Any help is greatly appreciated.n

[peteroznewman]

Hey Kristof,nHere is a table from ANSYS Help which I found by going to Mechanical APDL, Element Reference, Element Library and then scrolling down to BEAM188. Then I clicked on the Theory link. It shows the stiffness matrix depending on the keyop. Your code sets keyop(3) = 2 so your shape functions are quadratic and you can follow the link to the equations.nn

[KristofVC]

Hey Peter,nThank you for your response. I have tracked your response and found the shape functions you included.nI tried to do the same for the SHELL181 element, but here there appears to be no disclosure of the shape functions involved. Is this shielded from the user, or am I missing something? From the Element Reference I understood that it by default takes into account rotational DoF and shear deformation, but I can't locate the shape functions for that combination of properties from the Shape Functions chapter in the Theory reference. Thanks in advance!nn

[peteroznewman]

You didn't look in the right place.nnnn