Modeling of membrane loads applied at a point of a membrane

When defining a concentrated force applied at a node of a FEM mesh, a large disturbance of the equilibrium conditions may occur in a calculation model. This may result in obtaining excessive stress values near the point where the load is applied. Though there are typically no loads applied at a point in a real structure, you can define a concentrated force load with simultaneous definition of the width of the force distribution (the width onto which the load is transferred). If the width onto which the load is transferred is specified as greater than zero, the program distributes the concentrated force on a given width as a uniform load. This enables modeling a situation that is much closer to the real structure loading and obtaining more accurate results.

The distributed load is calculated using the following relation.

q = F / d, where:

q - Value of a distributed load [kN/m].

F - Value of a concentrated force [kN].

d - Width of the load distribution.

Note: A user defined concentrated force whose distance from the edge makes it impossible to distribute it over the user defined width ( the distance of the point where a force is applied is less than half the distribution width), the point of load application moves so that it is possible to transfer the whole force onto the deep-beam.