element force of shell elements clarification

[Lin Sun]

Hello STKO team,

I used shell elements and MPCOrecorder to record element forces. There are 24 components of forces (P1, P2, P3, P4, ..., P24). I am curious the definition of the these 24 force components. If you can help me with this I will be much appreciate.

Thank you.

Lin Sun

[STKO Team]

They are the 6 nodal forces at each of the 4 corner nodes in global coordinates.
They are not useful for post processing unless you want to integrate some specific result along the edge of a shell.

For shell forces (or deformations) in local coordinates, use "section.force" or "section.deformation".

[Lin Sun]

Understand. Thank you very much.

[BuuNguyen]

For shell forces (or deformations) in local coordinates, use "section.force" or "section.deformation".

Hi STKO, how can I extract section force? it can be visualized in the surface plot, but not available in the extract data function.
When I change to Gauss plot, I can not see the Gauss points in the shell elements to select them. When I select shell elements, their tag are not showed in the extract data function.

Do I have to use script in PythonAPI to extract the section force?
Thank,
Buu

[STKO Team]

If you are using a shell element you should be able to see section.force or section.deformation in the shell gauss points.

Sometimes it may happen that you have both beams and shells in the same model.
In this case you will have multiple section.force results. The one with 8 components is the shell one.

If it is not clear, please send your model and we will show you how to do it