During the course of my analysis, my model expands in one direction (XX) and contracts in the other (YY).
I want to simply measure the "expansion/contraction" of my model in XX and YY directions separately.
I know that, from the "Distance" query between two nodes, one can get the values for the "Base Distance" and "Deformed Distance". So the percentage of expansion would be
% Expansion = 100*[(Base distance)-(Deformed distance)/Base distance]
My question is two-fold and would love for some ideas, since this seems to be quite a simple task in a sense:
1) Using Python to dig into my odb file, can I obtain the fields that the GUI "Distance" feature gives? (Base distance, deformed distance etc)
2) My model is parametric. i.e, I generate, lets say 20 models and 20 input files, with varying mesh sizes/model lengths etc. Manually giving the node numbers in XX and YY directions to calculate the expansion seems to be a bit of an effort. Is there a better way to do this?
You can do that with python if you are willing to program a bit.
First, make sure that you write the node variable COORD to the odb so that the current coordinates are available.
Second, define node sets for the nodes on the sides of your structure.
You can then create a python program that will read out all coordinates of the nodes in the sets and from those you can calculate the distances.
Hello Dr. Baeker,
Thank you for your suggestion. I tried exactly what you said. Took a bit of digging around in the python code, but was able to achieve the expansion and reduction using deformed and undeformed Nodal Coordinates.
For others who are looking for solutions for similar problems : Use Numpy. It's pretty good for such things!
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