Shell thicknesses, thermal loads, cross section optimization and groupIDs?

Hi, as far as I can tell, I cannot accomplish the following in Karamba:

- apply a different thermal load for each shell element whilst grouping them for cross section optimization: I can only do one or the other (apply one thermal load for each group, or optimize each element's thickness individually). Grouping shell elements cannot be done through Make-Set and GroupIDs, only by inputting mesh patches as elements.

- exporting a list of thicknesses for each shell element after cross section optimization: I can only export the resulting meshes from ModelView, split them in alternating lists (so separate all top and bottom faces) and then measuring the distance between each pair of centroids, so a tedious work around.

If anyone can confirm that these are true in the current version, let me know.

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Karamba3D on February 12, 2015 at 11:53pm

Hi, in Karamba meshes constitute the basic building blocks of shell structures. Therefore loads (temperature, pre-stressing) and materials can not be applied to single elements.

The reason for this is, that the way how a geometry is meshed influences the numeric results (if the mesh is too course for example). Therefore it's advantageous to work with patches of geometry and not with individual elements.

An exception from this is the assignment of element thicknesses. A shell cross section can be given a list of thicknesses which get applied to the elements the order of the faces in the mesh which underlies the shell geometry. In Karamba 1.1.0 you can retrieve these thicknesses by disassembling the shell cross section.

Best,

Clemens

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