The Plane Remains Plane plug-in lets you constrain a planar face on a solid body using one or more of the following techniques:
Create Planar Constraint—a constraint is generated that causes the planar face to remain planar throughout an analysis. The plane can rotate and expand, but all nodes on the face will remain in-plane. This constraint is enforced using an analytical rigid surface that is placed in contact with the face with zero friction. A distributed coupling is also created between the analytical rigid surface reference node and all nodes on the face to constrain the rigid body motion of the analytical surface.
Create Parallel Planar Constraint—in addition to the analytical rigid surface constraint described above, a constraint is generated that forces the planar face to remain parallel to its original configuration.
Create Beam Element Normal to Plane—a beam element of any length is generated normal to the planar face and attached to the analytical rigid surface reference node through a kinematic coupling. This technique requires that you first create either of the constraints described above.
The plug-in has the following limitations:
If picking multiple planes to constrain, you must pick planes that are parallel. There is no automatic check that multiple planes are parallel.
When applying temperature fields, separate fields must be created for the solid and beam regions.
The analytical rigid surface will be sized to cover the entire plane in most cases, but there can be cases in which the size is insufficient. You should visually confirm the size of the analytical rigid surface; if the surface is too small, you will have to edit its dimensions in the Part module.
If the solid body is edited, the constraints must be deleted and redefined.
To create a planar constraint:
From the main menu bar in the Interaction module, select Plug-ins
ToolsPlane Remains PlaneCreate Planar Constraint or Create Parallel Planar Constraint.
Follow the prompts to select the surface that is to remain planar. Select the surfaces either individually, by face angle, or by face curvature. See “Selecting objects within the current viewport,” Section 6.2, for instructions.
Click Done when you are finished selecting surfaces.
In the Scaling Factor for ARS Plane dialog box, enter your desired scaling factor for the analytical rigid surface, and click OK.
If desired, select Plug-insToolsPlane Remains PlaneCreate Beam Element Normal to Plane to add a beam element normal to the plane. Follow the prompts to select an analytical rigid surface (to define the beam direction), specify the end point of the beam, and enter the length of the beam.