Issue with Tie Constraint on Shells

General Questions
1

Hi, I’m relatively new to FEA in general and very new to PrePoMax, Calculix and Salome. I’ve been working on a ground-mounted solar panel fixture, but am having repeatable issues using tie constraints between different shell components.

I’ve created tie constraints both manually and with “search contact pairs”, but the issue occurs with both where the tie constraint is seemingly ignored and the vertical column detaches from the fixture.

The issue I’m repeatedly facing is shown below:

image
image1792×1145 411 KB

Being a new user I’m not able to upload my pmx file, but can send it other ways if needed. I’m using PrePoMax 2.0.3 Dev, but it also occurs on the stable release. Mesh was made in Salome.

Any ideas?

Thanks,

2

maybe change the tolerance or moving column part to half of flange thickness can solve the problem.

3

It’s sometimes better to use compound parts. But if you want to use tie constraints, make sure that adjustment is enabled and that tolerance is properly set.

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