FEM ElementGeometry2D/ro

ElementGeometry2D is used to define the thickness of 2D (shell and introduced in 1.0: plane stress/strain) FEM elements, all or lying on the chosen surface.

1. There are several ways to invoke the command:
   • Press the Shell plate thickness button.
   • Select the Model → Element Geometry → Shell plate thickness option from the menu.
2. Specify the shell thickness.
3. Optionally press the Add button in the task panel and then click on the face you want to have a prescribed thickness. If the face selection is empty, all the remaining faces (whose thickness is not defined by other FEM ElementGeometry2D objects) will be automatically assigned.

Limitations

• Currently, analyses combining shell elements with solid or edge (beam) elements are not supported.

Properties

DateThickness: specifies the thickness of the 2D elements.

Notes

• For viewing results from CalculiX solver on the mesh expanded to the prescribed thickness, the property Beam Shell Result Output 3D in the FEM SolverCalculixCxxtools needs to be set to True. To just visualize the defined thicknesses before running actual calculations, one may run a check type analysis with this property set to True.
• This feature uses the *SHELL SECTION card in CalculiX for shell elements and *SOLID SECTION card for plane stress/strain elements.