I am building an FEM using Hypermesh of a cockpit instrument panel using 2D shell elements. In addition to the instrument panel the model includes a number of L-Angle struts (1D beams/bars) between the back of the instrument panel and the fwd bulkhead. These struts primarily support the instrument panel against the 16g inertial crash case, as prescribed for rotorcraft under CS-29. The loading is entirely inertial, with the mass of the instrument panel and point masses from the instruments making this up.

The struts are essentially at normal angles to the back of the instrument panel and I am looking for a quick and dirty way to join the 1D beam mesh to the 2D surface without having to model all the brackets and bolt positions in detail. This is because I wish to determine some initial sizing for the struts (cross section) before going into detailed joint analysis


My question is, is there an efficient (for the purposes of some initial sizing) way of joining the end node of a 1D beam mesh to a 2D surface mesh and would the load transfer and thus stressing of the struts be somewhere near representative?

Is it as simple as joining the end node of the 1D mesh to a surface node of the 2D surface mesh of the instrument panel?

Thanks