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[Brian Keats]

I'm running a random vibration analysis, and modelling my bolts as beam elements. I need to extract the beams forces (preferably in the beam coordinate systems so I can split out axial and shear forces). There doesn't seem to be an out-of-the-box way to do this. Does anyone have any insight on how I might get this done? 

I found this resource that allows me to extract beam forces in eather globa coordinates, or just the axial force in beam coordinates (I also need the shear).

https://simutechgroup.com/retrieve-beam-reaction-forces-in-random-vibration-analysis/

Is there a better approach than this? I'm transitioning to Ansys from an NX/NASTRAN background and I'm a bit shocked there's no native way to extract nodal or element forces.

[Aniket]

Would user-defined result as follows help?

-Aniket

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[Brian Keats]

That looks promising! I'm having a couple of issues.

When I select an edge associated with the beam element, I get the error that I need valid scoping.

If I curcumvent the scoping issue by scoping to element ID, I get the error that "A result is invalid with the current output control settings". Modal and random output settings are shown below. I have nodal forces enabled.

Any insight on how I can fix the above two issues?

[Aniket]

Are you modeling beams a line bodies? You will need to have line bodies in order to this to work.

-Aniket

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[Brian Keats]

I want to maintain connectivity to my solidworks model. I would have to break that to create line bodies. Is there a way I can use this approach without line bodies? If I include the fastener solid bodies, can I associate a beam mesh with the fastener geometry and use this approach?

[Brian Keats]

Never mind, I figured it out. I had to change scoping method to results file item, item type to element name IDs, and leave the default 'All' for solver component IDs and Golbal IDs.

[Brian Keats]

I have one final issue. There doesn't seem to be a good way to display the node numbers for body-to-body beam connections. When I try to display the node numbers in 'Preferences Annotations' they don't show up. I can't select beam nodes in the display window to see the node number either.