Topic: FBD Cross Section, Resultant Force & Moment Utility in HyperMesh
Topic details: HyperMesh allows you to create or edit Free Body Diagrams (FBD) using several tools from the Post (HW-9.0) and Results (HM 8.0SR1) pull down menu. This is available in OptiStruct, Radioss Linear, Nastran and Abaqus User Profiles.
FBD Utility Free Body Diagram (FBD) utilities facilitate the extraction and post-processing of Grid Point Force (GPFORCE) results. FBD extractions are typically utilized where balanced "free body" sub-cases are extracted from a coarse grid model and applied to a fine grid sub-model for eventual optimization and/or analysis. FBD is also used to extract cross-sectional resultant forces and moments (typically at the centroid of a cross-section) for use in traditional strength calculations.
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FBD Cross Section Manager:
This Utility creates and manages cross-section definitions that are used for the Resultant Force & Moment utility To define a Cross Section we need 4 entities: Element Set that defines the group of elements along the section Node Set that defines the section cut of group of Elements Summation Node that defines the node in the model where one can sum the Forces and Moments Result System that defines the Local Co-ordinate System where we can transform the results.
Cross Section Manager
The FBD Cross-section Manager interface has two creation methods available for cross-section definition: Manual and Semi automatic. The Advanced options under this utility section provides the means to semi-automatically create cross-section element and node sets for beam-like structures with even rows of elements only. To create a Cross Section: 1. Expand Advanced option tree, Click on Elements selector and select Elements Displayed and click Proceed. 2. Click on Nodes and select Nodes on one of the 2 ends of the part as shown below in order to define a node set.
Node Set creation over the length of the Beam
3. Define names for Element set prefix and Node set prefix and click Accept. Now this utility will walk down to length of the model in this case beam (shown above) and populates element set and node set cross section definitions as shown below.
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Advanced Option under Cross Section Manager
4. By default the Sum node is set to Centroid, so this utility calculates the average X-Y-Z Co-ordinates for all the nodes in the cross-section and creates a temporary node at the averagely nodded centroid in the section and sum all the forces and moments about this point. 5. Once the Cross Sections are defined we can use these data for the Resultant Force and Moment Utility.
FBD Resultant Force and Moment:
This utility extracts grid point force (GPFORCE) data for user defined cross-sections created via the Cross-section Manager. It takes the OP2/ODB file which needs to have GPFORCE defined for all the nodes and elements defined in the cross section and would generate input data for shear and moment (VMT) diagrams and/or to perform load-case screening with Potato plots within HyperGraph. To Generate Resultant Force and Moment: 1. Go to Post Free Body Resultant Force and Moment drop down, you would notice that the Cross Section data created in the previous step gets automatically populated. 2. Now Input the OP2/ODB file which has the GPFORCE data defined and this would populate the sub-case defined in the result file. 3. Select all the Sub-cases and Cross-Sections by clicking on , select a local system if one and leave the Zero tolerance value to default. 4. Check on Create load collector and Show summary table in order to visualize the moments and forces on the cross section. 5. Check Create .csv file /.fbd file in order to export the Force and Moment details at various node locations shown by the Summary table. 6. When you click Accept it would extract the Cross Section results for every Sub-Case provided by the result file. Altair 2008
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Resultant Force and Moment Utility
Summary table
7. One can also use the FBD Results Manager to graphically review and manage the load collectors generated from all FBD and Resultant Force and Moment utilities. 8. Finally the CSV/FBD file generated would have all the Force and Moment data which can be input in HyperGraph in order to plot the Shear Moment/Potato Curves as shown below.
FBD Utility in HG
Altair 2008
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Author: Altair HyperWorks Technical Support Group (sg)
Date this entry was last reviewed:
January 2009 Keywords: FBD, GPFORCE, Resultant Force, Moment
