Using shell mesh for thin parts

[hhwu]

I have a large bridge girder I'm planning to analyze for deflection/stresses. The model is large and made up of generally thin pieces. A normal solid mesh did not work -- I think the program ran out of memory. Shell meshing is recommended to analyze thin parts, but I've never had to employ it.

So I start out with some practice with simple parts. I made three 100x500x5(mm) plates and formed a wide-flange shape with it. Then constrained the end of the wide-flange to a fourth plate to form a cantilever.

After creating a shell study, I picked a surface on each of the plates to represent the structure, and entered 5mm for thickness. Then I created bonded contact sets between all the touching faces of the plates. Finally, I restrained the base plate and applied pressure on the web of the wide-flange. The structure did mesh, but the analysis failed, which leads me to believe there's something wrong with the way I'm constraining/bonding the plates.

Thanks in advance for your help,

- HH

 

[vims]

When you define your contact set I think you have to select the edge of the surface that you picked when defining the shell. You can not pick a surface that isn´t defined as a shell.