On shell elements, the pressure is supposed to follow the normal elements. In the current study
all normals are “inside” oriented (see gmsh screenshots)
the mesh has been exported from gmsh to inp format
if i want to inflate the part, the applied pressure is theoretically negative
it’s (more or less) the case for the cone, but not for the cylinder in which a positive pressure should be applied to have “outside” arrows (a bit disturbing)
furthermore, one can see in the cone screenshot that some arrows remain “inside” oriented, leading to inconsistent results
Note i may have made a specific “lighter” model and check if the same behaviour occurs
The thing is that it also matters on which side of the surface you click. If you choose the inner side of the cone’s surface, you won’t have to change the sign:
ok i can confirm the orientation depends on which side you click on (“internal” surface or “external” one; it’s a bit confusing regarding the common definition of the shell (lower face / upper face … see offset for instance). But ok, the pressure is applied following the arrows orientation whatever are the normals.
PrePoMax knows how the faces are oriented, so the direction of the applied pressure depends on the surface side the user selects. This is a much more user friendly way of defining the pressure direction for new users. The user does not have to care about the face orientations only selects the surface the pressure acts upon. As for solids.
