Putting It All Together |
 
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Putting It All Together |
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For completeness the following is a summary of the actual mechanics of specifying the data for the analysis of the sample pipeline model. It is assumed that the coordinates (in the initial stressed or deformed position) of Nodes 1 to 41 are known, and can be input in the usual way by defining these nodes directly.
Specification of the finite element mesh connectivity would be relatively straight forward in the absence of the necessity to input the components of V and W. You would simply define Element 1 as joining Nodes 1 and 2, and then generate the remainder of the mesh using the element generate facility. However the process is not overly complicated by the need to input V and W. The actual procedure is that you specify the connectivity of Element 1 and also the components of V and W, using either of the specifications of the previous section (or indeed any other similarly valid scheme). You then generate the remaining elements as before. When the undeformed orientation of an element is explicitly defined and that element is then identified as the Master Element in generating further elements, the undeformed orientation of the master element becomes by default the undeformed orientation of the generated elements.
In fact, this is the only way to specify the undeformed orientation of generated elements. This feature is in reality a bonus, because what you are usually trying to do when specifying undeformed orientations is to ensure all elements have the same orientation - the orientation itself is frequently (though not always) immaterial.