Learning Forum

[Moisés González Tamargo]

Hello everyone,

 

I am trying to simulate an inflatable structure with pipe and shell elements, the elements are mechanically attached so as to transfer the loads between them, so I use the share topology option in my SpaceClaim geometry.

However, when importing it to ANSYS Mechanical, I am no table to apply the internal inner pressure to the pipes, I tried to un-share the pipe structure from the outer shell envelope and attach them with bounding connections but I am getting an ill matrix error upon solution.

I cannot upload any details about the project, but I replicated an example of the configuration with a cube, the edges are modelled as beam elements and the faces as Shell, all of them with 0.1 mm thickness. When I try to share the topology, I get the following error:

And disabling the share topology and setting up manual bonding connections I do manage to get it working and obtain a reasonable solution:

The pipe element sizing not matching the face sizing was done on purpose.

Nevertheless, the automatic contacts are not working in the entire model I am having issues with and establishing hundreds of contacts manually would be my last resource.

 

Any suggestions would be highly appreciated.

 

Best regards.

[Naresh Patre]

Hello,

Under Connections branch of Mechanical if you add a new Connection group and set Face/Edge and Edge/Edge option as "Yes" and generate contacts, this should automatically generate contacts between the edge and the face. Can you try out this option and see if it helps?

[Moisés González Tamargo]

 

Thanks for your reply,

 

I have alredy tried to generate connections in this way but Mechanical crashed every single time.

However, I managed to get it working by using mesh connections and selecting all bodies in my geometry. Similarly to what is done in this tutorial: Batch Connections in Ansys – Never use Share Topology for Beam and Shell models | Finite Element Analysis (FEA) Blog – LEAP Australia & New Zealand

 

The problem now comes when I implement this solution onto my full model. The aforementioned error disapears but I get an unknown error when solving: Invalid element number = 0. The SFE command is ignored. Which doesn´t occur when I suppress the pipe pressure load.

¿Is there any other way of running this simulation?