Mesh

The following video shows how to create a regular mesh for the rectangle using "Mapped face meshing".

<iframe width="600" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/9GOxpcILyVM?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

For this example, we would like to use "Q4" elements i.e. quadrilateral elements with 4 nodes for every element, one at each corner. It turns out that the quadrilateral elements in the mesh obtained above have mid-side nodes in addition to the corner nodes. So these elements are "Q8" elements with a total of 8 nodes for each element. In the video below, we drop mid-side nodes to get "Q4" elements (in the ANSYS element library, these are referred to as PLANE 182). Note that the mid-side nodes provide higher accuracy, so in the real world, you would not drop mid-side nodes unless you had a compelling reason to do so. Here we do it for learning purposes.

<iframe width="600" height="338" src="//www.youtube.com/embed/UxJtAwVM8Lo?rel=0" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Go to Step 4: Physics Setup

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