Overview of components that deserve to be analyzed with solid elements

As an analyst, you will be confronted with a wide range of simulation tasks, and the onus will be on you to decide on the most appropriate element as part of the finite element simulation workflow. Choosing the right element has an enormous impact on the accuracy of your simulations.

In the context of static analysis, the solid element remains one of the most flexible elements suitable for the analysis of various kinds of components. In the previous chapters, we mentioned some limitations of the truss/beam/shell elements when they were introduced. Although these elements allow us to use fewer elements in our simulations, they are all mathematical and mechanistic approximations of three-dimensional (3D) bodies. Therefore, in practice, a set of solid elements can be used whenever the structure you wish to analyze violates the limitations of structural elements such as beam/shell elements. For instance, anytime...