Any way to disable a part (analyze without removing the part)?

dculp

I have a modal analysis model that consists of a body and a stud. After completing this analysis I want to disable the stud and rerun the analysis. However, the only way I have found to do this is to actually remove the stud.stp from the Geometry in the Configuration tab. This then requires also removing any Loads and Constraints and any Named Selections that are associated with the stud.

Is there a way to disable the stud without actually removing it from the model? (Simply hiding the stud doesn't work.)

Mecway 13.1, Windows 10

Thanks,
Don C.

disla

Hi,

First notice that some typical BC used in bolted connections are not available in Buckling analysis like Contact and Pretension.

Taking this into consideration the easiest way is to lock all the displacements of the bolt and suppress (right button on load&constrain) any contact you established with the main body.
If you don’t want to supress the contacts move the bolt a fixed distance outside the main body (for easy recover) so the contact doesn’t have any effect.

You can check there is no difference with deleting the bolt in this file. I have use the nice example liml file from Mr. JohnM (post : Bolted connections approach )

dculp

disla --

Your suggestion (suppressing the bonded contacts) works as desired for analyzing without the effect of the stud. Thanks.

For presentation, in the left panel under Solution\Components, I right-click on the stud and then Hide.

dculp

disla --

Your suggestion (suppressing the bonded contacts) should work fine for static analysis. However, it may be somewhat limited for modal analysis. Suppressing the bonded contacts doesn't actually disable the stud. In addition to extracting the natural frequencies of the body, the natural frequency of the stud will also be extracted if they fall within the specified extraction range. This would contaminate the list of natural frequencies since only those of the body are actually desired. It would also increase the analysis time by extracting the stud's natural frequencies.

In my particular model the stud is short so its natural frequencies are well above those of the body. This will not be true for other models.

disla

Hi dculp,

I'm sorry but English is not my natural language so I'm expressing poorly sometimes.
When I say "the easiest way is to lock all the displacements of the bolt and...." I mean to set the displacements=0. If not, it will happen what you have described.

That's why I normally send the liml file. For me is easier to show than to explain.