Discussion Forum

I would like to be able to evaluate an equation of the form .

I am modeling contact behavior between cylinders and a rectangular prism. I want to see how contact pressure varies along the length of the cylinder due to uneven loading. If I create a line graph of solid.Tn along the desired edge, this has two undesired effects:

1. Contact pressure is point pressure specifically along the edge, whereas I am interested in the total line pressure along the circumference of the cylinder

2. Plotting this value produces artifacts, I presume (let me know if I'm wrong) from strangeness relating to meshing and sampling discrete locations (see attached). Decreasing mesh size makes these artifacts more dense, but doesn't seem to reduce their magnitude.

To resolve these issues, I would like to integrate contact pressure over the circumference of the cylinder, evaluating at several points along the length of the cylinder. The expression would be of the form where is the radius of the cylinder and is the distance from the base of the cylinder.

Unfortunately, solid.Tn does not support evaluation like this, and, depending on the feature selected, may not be available. For example, when using cut planes, the intersection of the plane and the cylinder does not have the proper attributes. Adding a parameterized surface similarly does not appear to work.

I can evaluate the line integral at edges with no issue, however, I desired more points than the rim of the cylinder. Adding more layers can similarly allow for more evaluation points, but this is tedius and not programatic.

I see two possible work arounds:

1. Add layers to the cylinder and evaluate integrals in a programmatic manner to get data points for the line graph.

2. Access contact pressure in more general, spacial sense, and evaluate line integrals over a parameter sweep.

If you have advice on how to approach either of these methods, or suggest a better one, I appreciate your help.