Shell to Solid Connection in Optistruct
Altair EmployeeWhen a shell element is attached to a solid element node to node, only the translations get transferred between the shell and the solid elements. The rotations do not get transferred as the solid elements do not have rotational degrees of freedom. This creates a hinge between the shell edge and the solid face, resulting in a mechanism if the shell nodes are colinear.
In order to transfer the rotations between the shell and solid elements and eliminate the hinge, users resort to different approaches and some options are also available in Optistruct. The different approaches are compared in this document with illustrative examples.
Example1 is like a cantilever where the shell edge nodes are colinear and the model exhibits a mechanism when shell to solid coupling is not considered.
Example2 uses a curved plate. Since the shell edge nodes are not colinear, there is no mechanism if a shell to solid coupling is not used. But the connection is more flexible compared to a solid model or a model with shell to solid coupling included.