Discussion Forum

Hi

if you two plates are in contact (common boundary, and you use the default "union" geometry "Finish" mode, then you have by default "continuity of the displacements between both items.

Rigid Connector is a tricky one, be sure you really understand what it's doing, it's not only adding nice BC possibilities such as torque/moment loads but it also makes the Boundary fully stiff, that is not always the desired effect

Another issue, try to avoid Point and Edge loads in 3D, as these re singularities and destroy the useful stress analysis and use only distributed loads (Domain = volume i.e. gravity or volume forces or Boundary = surfaces loads i.e. distributed pressure or total Force => pressure = average force/Area applied

But you might want to do a periodic (or anti-periodic link, from what I suspect of your model), then I would rather use pairs, or coupling variables, check the doc

Finally, an advice, update to latest patch (# 3 by today) as there are a few internal formula issues in the old one you use

--
Good luck
Ivar

Thanks for the response.
I use the the Rigid Connector because I want to restrict the motion of the plates along certain axes (x,y) but not the z axis. Is there a way I can do this without using the RC?

Hi

yes the prescribed displacement is there for that, one of the nice things with the RBC is the access to the rotation angle in a quaternion formulation hence, also valid for large angles

--
Good luck
Ivar

You can “fuse” two surfaces such that their displacement is the same in X, Y but not Z, by defining a Boundary Similarity Model Coupling. Define one surface as the Source and the other surface as the Destination. If we call this coupling operator bndsim1, then you add a prescribed displacement on the Destination surface with u=bndsim1(u), v=bndsim1(v), and leave the Z direction free.

Nagi Elabbasi
Veryst Engineering