beginner question: nr of stations vs nr of elements, monodimensional beam model

[Francesco Schiava]

Hi, I take advantage of your willingness to ask a really beginner question.
The scenario is modelling a unidimensional simple beam system (in ip: Saint Venant or Tymoschenko).
I understand there’s a default of 5 stations per element for running the analysis (or at least for the output results).
question 1) is it possible to change the number of stations? (I’ve noticed that if I load the single-element-beam with an irregular load, the stations for analysis are increased automatically to far more than 5, but there seems to be no control of this adjustament)
I saw in one of your tutorials a cantilever beam modeled with several distincted finite elements, and I get this should be the most proper way of modelling in Fem, so:
question 2) is there a way to accelerate/automatize this way of modeling, for examble by splitting a given element (a beam) into a number of sub-elements, possibly controlling the number of sub-elemts or the sample pitch? Maybe this process is supposed to be done externally and imported as csv or dxf?

Thank you

[NextFEM Admin]

Hello, please find answers below:
1) NextFEM Designer has a completely automatical automeshing, that occurs only for linearly variable distibuted load on beams. Stations are automatically adjusted accordingly (e.g., in Verifications, the 5 stations of an internally-meshed elements are automatically interpolated from results)
2) there’s no need to mesh beams manually, unless you want a higher a resolution in results using uniform distributed loads. In any case, see command Edit / Divide or merge.

hope this helps, regards

[Author]

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