adding shell elements

[a5kwan]

how do you add two different shell elements that have different amounts of nodes? i'm trying to model a 3-d composite wing box in ansys with shell91 as the skin and shell41 element as the ribs. shell91 is 8 noded while shell41 is 4 noded.

Thanks

 

[Drej]

Be careful, because if you link shells (or any element) with different DOF you will get incompatability problems. Hence, I would find another way to do this, for example by linking your shell91 to shell93. If you need to "add" this as an element type, use the command

et,#,93

where # is an arbitrary set number allocated. Don't forget to add the real constants and materials data for this element also

r,#,...
mp,...

Cheers,

-- drej --