Defining Solids (Geometric Primitives)

In some applications, it is required that the nodes stay in a certain region, or, conversely, are not allowed to enter a certain region during the shape or bead optimization.

This task shows you how to:

See Also
In Other Guides
SOLID

Context:

In SIMULIA Tosca Structure, such regions can be defined by geometric primitives: in two dimensions, rectangles, circles or circular segments; in three dimensions, bricks, cylinders and cylinder segments are supported. The type of the geometric primitive depends on the coordinate system it is defined with.

In the figure, the cylindrical segment 0 ≤ r ≤ 10 , 0 ≤ φ ≤ 90 , 5 ≤ z ≤ 10 in the cylindrical coordinate system C2 and the cube 5 ≤ x ≤ 10 , 5 ≤ y ≤ 10 , 5 ≤ z ≤ 10 in the Cartesian coordinate system R1 are shown:

Define Solids in Tosca Structure.gui

  1. To create a new geometric primitive, choose Command | SOLID in Tosca Structure.pre screen.
  2. Edit the type of the geometric primitive (Neutral, Variation, or Restricted), the coordinate system and the extents of the geometric primitive in each coordinate in the appeared window.

    The field ID_NAME defines the name of the geometric primitive, so that it can be referenced in the DVCON_SHAPE command (see LINK_SHAPE).

    Important: Another usage of geometric primitives in SIMULIA Tosca Structure is the SELECT command. In this case, the nodes that lie inside a geometric primitive defined using a SOLID command are selected. Node selection in solids is independent of the mesh density of the FE model, only depending on geometric dimensions. This selection method is more complicated than other methods but is highly recommended for models with varying mesh density.