Table of Contents

Pressure and shear

Pressure and shear boundary conditions can be applied using special finite elements defined on the boundary of the mesh. The geometry of these elements are lines in 2D corresponding to the boundary edges of the elements of the 2D mesh. In 3D, pressure elements are triangles or quads, depending of the shape of the facets of the elements of the mesh near the boundary.

As any finite element, their definition requires an ElementProperty object and an Interaction (LoadingInteraction). Unlike contact finite element, there is no “material” associated to this kind of element.

The ElementProperty contains the type of element and the values for the pressure and the shear, as well as functions defining the time evolution of these values.

These elements should not be mixed with dead loads. In most cases, pressure elements should be chosen over dead loads because:

Pressure Elements

Element

The first step consists in defining an ElementProperties, as 

prp = ElementProperties(typeEl)
prp.put(param, value)
prp.depend(param, fct, lock)) # optional
...

where

typeEl desired element (for example Pressure[2|3]DElement - see below)
param name of the property associated to the element (e.g. PRESSURE)
value value of the corresponding property (e.g. value for the pressure
fct function which characterizes the dependency of the property (optional: no fct if the value is constant)
lock lock which defines the dependency variable of the property (e.g. time-dependence = TM)

Pressure2DElement, Pressure3DElement

Pressure/shear element for a mesh made of triangles/quadrangles in 2D or hexahedra in 3D.

Parameters

Name Description Dependency
STIFFMETHOD Method used to compute the stiffness matrix
= STIFF_ANALYTIC : analytic matrix (default)
= STIFF_NUMERIC : numerical matrix 		-
PRESSURE Pressure on the entity on which the propriety is applied time
SHEAR_KSI / SHEAR_ETA Shear along $\xi$ or $\eta$ on the entity on which the propriety is applied time
NPG Number of integration points (default : 2) -
Pressure2DElement / Pressure2DElement were named Traction2DElement / Traction3DElement before v3484. The sign of the pressure has also been changed in 2D.

TrianglePressure3DElement

Pressure/shear element for a mesh made of tetrahedra

Parameters

Name Description Dependency
STIFFMETHOD Method used to compute the stiffness matrix\\= STIFF_ANALYTIC : analytic matrix (default)
= STIFF_NUMERIC : numerical matrix
Not applicable, only the numerical one exists ! 		-
PRESSURE Pressure on the entity on which the propriety is applied time
SHEAR_KSI / SHEAR_ETA Shear along $\xi$ or $\eta$ on the entity on which the propriety is applied time
NPG Number of integration points (default : 1) -

ContactPressure2DElement, ContactPressure3DElement

Derivations of Pressure2DElement and Pressure3DElement with the possibility to set the pressure/shear force of a node to zero, when this node is in contact within a specified contact interaction. To determine the contact status, the contact flag of the previous time step is used.

Parameters

The same than in Traction2DElement and Traction3DElement, with the following additional parameters:

Name Description Dependency
NUM_CONTACT_INTERACTION Number of the contact interaction, which is tested for the contact status -
TRACTION_AT_TRANSITION_ON If True (default), the traction of a node belonging to an element at the transition from contact to no contact is not set equal to zero, although the node is in contact -

Interaction

The interaction used for pressure/shear element is a LoadingInteraction. It is defined as: 

load = LoadingInteraction(no)
load.push(gObject1)
load.push(gObject2)
...
load.addProperty(prp)
interactionset.add(load)

where

no number of the Interaction
gObject1, gObject2 meshed geometric entity where the boundary conditions are applied (one part of the boundary of the mesh)
prp Properties of boundary condition elements to be generated