Learning Forum

[jonsys]

Does ANSYS display stress values at integration points like many FEM software, or it extrapolates them to the nodal position of the element?

[peteroznewman]

Jon,

By default, ANSYS extrapolates stress values from the integration points to the nodal positions.  This is generally desirable, however there are special circumstances where you don't want ANSYS to extrapolate out to the nodal positions. There is a flag that you can set to override the default and cause ANSYS to copy the stress at the integration point out to the nodes. It's the command snippet ERESX, NO and I learned about this from Sandeep.

An example when I want that override is when using an Elastic Perfectly-Plastic (EPP) material model. There should be no stress in the model above yield, but with large elements, the extrapolation can show stress values above yield.  Use the command snippet and there will be no stress plotted that is above yield.

Regards,

Peter