Learning Forum

[malorengo]

I am using static structural analysis to investigate the robustness of different 3D lattices. I need to run FEA of a single part to find it's average equivalent stress, but in Ansys Mechanical I need to be able to select specific members and find the average equivalent stress of that specific section.

One way to do this is to to you the Volume Select Tool to select all the relevant mesh elements making up a member. However, this is very unweildy and will become difficult to use as I look at more complex lattice structures.

Another potential idea was to define each member as a separate body, but when I import these models into Ansys Mechanical it treats them as separate parts. This causes variations in the stress analysis due to the Contacts between bodies, which would not occur if it was analyzed as a single body.

To be completely clear, I need analyze a single body part, but be able to quickly select members individually to run stress analyses on those sections specifically, in a 3D part. I have a work flow worked out for 2D analysis already. Is this possible? 

P.S. I am using the student version of Ansys which may come with some limitations.