I have a couple questions on plates in RAM Elements.
1. Can you model a plate with different boundary conditions. i.e. Fixed sides, pinned bottom and free top or some combination of these?
2. Sorta relating to the above - Is there a good way to model an underground tank in elements. Meaning I would like to apply an area load for soil and surcharge pressure. This load would be uniformly varying top to bottom. Maybe you could use a series of line loads on very flexible members with very low MOE? Again I'm not sure how you set up the support constraints. This would make for an interesting article in using your software possibly or any FEA for that matter.
Thanks again!
Check this FAQ for details about both questions: communities.bentley.com/.../7652.ram-elements-shells-faq.aspx
You can use different supports on shell nodes, but the shells themselves are not hinged, and pressures are uniform only.
Thanks, I did read through the FAQ, thank you. So you would need to manually create the shells near the edges of the plate and then only provide support reactions at corner and bottom nodes (all the nodes along the corner). If you select a pin support wouldn't it be acting as if it were pinned?
Thanks again.
Right, if you want different supports along different edges, then you need to manually mesh the shells so that you have more than 4 nodes to work with. Then you can assign whatever supports you want node-by-node.
Answer Verified By: RFreund