Actually the equivalent stress of beam elements is not stored in Explicit Dynamics system by Autodyn solver. That’s why you observed the value “0” when plotting equivalent stress of the beam elements. Autodyn solver uses bending moments plus stress resultants to evaluate the stress information for beams elements, which is often used in many technical publications. Higher bending moments and higher stress resultants result in higher stress in the beam elements. Bending deformation is measured by bending moments at beam nodes. Higher bending moment usually corresponds to higher bending stress in the beam elements with the same cross-section. In Explicit Dynamics system, user can plot the bending moments (BM.YI, BM.YJ, BM.ZI, and BM.ZJ) in Autodyn GUI at beam nodes. User can also plot the stress resultant F_AXIAL (axial force of a beam element) and MOM_TOR (torsional moment of a beam element) via User-Defined Results. The axial strain of a beam element can be plotted by Principal Strain plot (Strain_1).