Connecting Surfaces

CMZA

Hi

I'm playing around with a flanged pipe, ultimately trying to get an idea of the tensile and shear loads on the bolts. Firstly I'm just trying to get the mesh working correctly, so I have only connected three bolts (small beams) to the flange to keep things stable. Although I created a single step file with a split line on the flange of the same diameter as the pipe, most of the nodes don’t quite seem to line up. This causes the pipe surface to penetrate the flange as shown in the attached picture. I can merge many of the nodes that are close to each other, but was wondering if there is perhaps a more elegant technique or method for doing this.

Thanks.

Victor

Hello CMZA.

It sounds like you have two disconnected parts in the same STEP file - the pipe and the flange. In that case, Mecway's mesher usually won't work or won't align the nodes on both parts. Instead, you could combine them into a single part. However I'm not sure if that'll work with this kind of geometry where more than two faces meet at an edge.

The most reliable way is to use a single solid geometry instead of surfaces. If you prefer shells for the analysis, you can get a shell mesh from a solid STEP file with Meshing parameters -> Surface mesh then delete the unneeded faces. Note that the resulting shell mesh will be where the surface of the solid was, not the midplane.

If you want the pipe and flange to remain separate parts, you can make two solid meshes and use bonded contact to join them.

CMZA

Hi Victor,

Thanks for the advice! I'll try out your suggestions over the weekend.

Regards
Chistopher.