Adamae Enriquez

Creating a hole on a cylindrical surface is not an easy task. First of all there is no automated way of doing this. Manually deleting some of the generated plates to approximately represent the hole will possibly be the easiest approach. If more accuracy…

Sorry for the typo ... please read " ... you need to multiply the shear stress SQX by the thickness to get shear FORCE per unit length ... by mistake I wrote stress ... and yes thickness is the overall thickness of the plate.

Yes SQX and SQY are out of plane shear stresses. Please refer to section 1.6.1 of the technical reference manual titled Plate and Shell Element where these are explained with pictures (Figure1-28). As explained in the wiki, you need to multiply the…

The units used to report the SQX and SQY would indicate that. For example if the SQX is reported as 35 psi, then the shear force over 1 inch of length along element local X, per 1 inch thickness of the element is 35 pounds.

SQX/SQY are the shear stresses. So if you want to find out the shear force, you would have to multiply these by the respective shear area which would be equal to critical perimeter x effective depth.

Bottom right hand corner of the main window, you should see "English" or "Metric" or "SI". Pick that drop down arrow to change or configure the units. It's under the "Units configuration" that you select default for new files.