PSHELL thickness limiting value

[karkrish]

hi friends,
I've recently joined the forum and have quite few doubts plz anyone among you guide me. And the question, what is the PShell element thickness limiting value for a plate to be considered as a shell element? Plz post your answers...

 

[rb1957]

Pshell is the NASTRAN property of shell elements, yes? (CQUAD, etc) ... have you looked into the NASTRAN manual ?

if there's nothing written, investigate it for yourself ... model a plate with different loads (in-plane, out-of-plane) and vary the thickness and see how well the results compare with hand calcs. personally i would go much beyond the shortest element slide length as a thickness. another test would be how many elements through the thickness ? i think one should be ok, plates understand bending, but it's always good to find out things for yourself.


Quando Omni Flunkus Moritati

 

[spongebob007]

I could pay a monkey $10 an hour to push buttons on an FEA program and make pretty picutres. You are an engineer and not a monkey, correct? Do yourself and your organization a favor and learn at the very least some of the basic theory behind FEA and the physics behind what you are trying to model.

I don't beleive that there is any physical limit. I suppose I could make my shell elements 10 feet thick if I want to. If you understood FEA (or plate/shell, beam theory) you would know that the length to thickness ratio should be at least ten. Your FEA code came with a bunch of great reference material. Use it.

Also the above suggestion of making test models is a great one. I have been doing FEA for 20 years now (more if you count school) and I make little test models quite frequently.

FEA is like many other things-garbage in, garbage out.