sen.01 - Modelling of surfaces

This module enables you to input flat or curved surfaces in the environment of SCIA Engineer. Planar or curved surfaces may have defined straight or curved edges, constant or variable thickness, specific boundary conditions such as ribs, openings, subregions or cut-outs defined by intersecting surfaces. Surface, line or nodal forces may be applied, and nodal and edge supports may be defined. You can use specific tools to create and edit the topology of planar elements, generate FE mesh on them and enable them in the FE analysis. Furthermore, a whole set of results on surfaces is available. All tools and functions described in module sen.00 are available for planar elements as well.

Planar and curved surfaces

Not only planar, but also curved surfaces (members) can be modelled. The structure may contain e.g. cylinders, cones, hyperboloids, spirals and other simpler or complex shapes. From a mathematical point of view all these surfaces are defined as arbitrary quadrilaterals or triangles. The shape of the edges then specifies the shape of the final surface.

Once a curved surface (member) is inputted, it can be edited using standard functions for geometric manipulation. The edges can also be edited and, if required, their shape can be altered e.g. from Bezier curve to a line or vice versa.

Cut-outs of 2D members

This feature extends the possibilities of SCIA Engineer by generating intersections of 2D members. Under certain circumstances the generation of the intersection (i.e. the intersection line or curve) is sufficient, for example when you need to connect a plate and a wall so that they “know” about each other and act as one unit. On the other hand, especially curved surfaces require more than a simple calculation of the intersection curve. It is usually necessary to remove a part of the structure on one side of the intersection and to keep just the other part.

The action is then split into 2 steps:

• calculation of the intersection (i.e. intersecting curve)
• removal of the part (the "cut-out") that should not be taken into account in the calculation (when exists)

Linear analysis of planar elements

Module sen.01 extends the FE analysis capabilities described in module sen.00 by the possibility of generating mesh on planar elements (slabs, walls, shells) and performing FE analysis with them. FE analysis results can be viewed and evaluated in several ways.

Clear and detailed results

• Diagrams on the model: diagrams of result values drawn on the model in 3D graphical window
• Resultants: loads, reactions, forces in sections
• Detailed results on separate planar and shell elements: detailed evaluation of results and diagrams element by element
• Comprehensive report about the calculation
• Engineering Report: combination of tables and pictures in a structured report
• Table Results: all results values in a tabular form (with an optional export to MS Excel)

Comprehensive results

Slabs, walls and shells allow following options for drawing of results on planes:

• isobands / isolines
• resultants
• local and global extremes

Each type of basic results on planar elements is supported by several tools for convenient and quick display of results in selected areas:

• integration strips
• sections
• averaging strips

Required modules:

• sen.00