Autodesk Inventor Nastran offers a range of useable elements building finite element models from created geometry. There are three main groups of finite elements available in Inventor Nastran.
- Solids
- Shells
- Lines
Inventor Nastran supports different combinations of mesh, such as:
- Solid-beam combined mesh. For example, the concrete slab case where the reinforcement beams are meshed within the solid mesh by selecting their edges, as shown in the image below.
- Shell-beam combined mesh. Here, we can have two different cases of combined mesh of shells and beams:
- Example 1: An aircraft wing with the skin meshed with shells and the C spars meshed as beams with C cross-section as shown below.
- Example 2: A heat exchanger which consists of plates meshed as shells and intersecting tubes/pipes meshed as pipe elements. For connectivity we need to have intersecting 3D point with mesh control as explained in the image below.
The heat exchanger with the cross-section displayed is shown below.
- Example 1: An aircraft wing with the skin meshed with shells and the C spars meshed as beams with C cross-section as shown below.
- Solid-Shell combined mesh well known as
Skinned mesh.
- Solid-Shell-beam combined mesh well known as
Mixed mesh.
- Shell-Shell combined mesh well known as
Shell continuous mesh.
