Learning Forum

[fld]

Dear community We are using the current release of Ansys Mechanical 2022 R1 (License: ANSYS Mechanical Enterprise). Trying to run an old APDL script, we noticed that the legacy element SHELL91 seemed to be removed silently with this release. With the previous version Ansys 2021 R2 the code runs without any problems. However, with the current release Ansys 2022 R1 an error pops up saying "An element referred to as 91 is a 'null' or undefined element".
As we were not able to find any hint in the documentation or release notes of Ansys 2022 R1 that the legacy element SHELL91 has been removed with this release, we are a bit unsure if this is an intended behavior or a problem on our side. Therefore, we would happily appreciate any help on this topic.

[Erik Kostson]

Hi

Yes, shell91 has been removed and is not there anymore in 2022 R1 (and onwards).

SHELL91 use to be unique higher order shell elements for modeling composites with unique post processing capability (i.e interlaminar shear stresses). Today the SHELL181 and SHELL281 can do all that the older elements could do. Also SHELL181/281 support a broader category of nonlinear materials (shell93 only supported metal plasticity and creep). SHELL181/281 also support SECTION technology making them easier to use and post process. So continue with shell181 instead.

If you still want to use shell91 then you need an earlier release say 2021 releases and prior to that.

All the best

Erik