Learning Forum

[jhniat]

I am attempting to analyse longitudinal shear (interface shear) between a precast post-tensioned concrete I-girder and cast in situ concrete deck as part of a bridge using ANSYS. I am having some trouble getting the model to mesh correctly between the contact points of the rebar and concrete. I have attempted to follow the methods used my many others found online using the SOLID65 and LINK180 element types for the concrete and rebar respectively. I have defined all of my rebar as lines (using the lines from sketches method) and assigned them a cross section. I have selected the 'add frozen' option for this as I believe this is necessary in order to assign the different materials to the concrete/steel bodies. When I mesh the overall structure, I am finding that ANSYS does not recognize the two different bodies and align nodes along the surface of the rebar and instead appears to mesh the girder as though the rebar is not even there.

How can I fix this and enable the meshing to conform around the rebar so that there is the appropriate nodal connection between the two materials so that the structure acts compositely? Surely there is a better way to do this then the cut/extrude an identical volume from the concrete body for each rebar? Any help would be greatly appreciated.

Note that I haven't finished adding in the reo to the model including the PT.

    

[peteroznewman]

In DesignModeler, you have to select all the bodies at the bottom of the outline then RMB and Form New Part. That will create a multibody part and by default, Shared Topology is automatically going to be used to have the common node line up. Please show a screen snapshot of your DM outline.

[jhniat]

I currently have two individual bodies and two parts. The girder and deck are individual bodies and the longitudinal reo and shear ligs are parts in their own right (each part contains more than one line body). I just tried combining all of the reo and girder into a single part file but I am getting an error to do with the shared topology which I have set to default. The shear ligs extend into the deck but I do not wish to combine the deck with the rest of the bodies into a part as I want to apply a frictional factor to that interface.