Prior to solving for results, plates needs to be meshed. SkyCiv’s plate mesher is able to divide a plate into triangle or quadrilateral shell elements.

The shell elements used to divide the plate include both a membrane and bending component to the element.

To specify a plate mesh in SkyCiv Structural 3D simply provide inputs for:

• Plate Selection – Select the plate(s) to be meshed. Use commas to separate plate numbers, a hyphen to select all plate numbers within a range, or click the ‘Select All’ button.
• Type of Elements – The type of shell element to divide the plate – this is either structured quadrilaterals or quadrilaterals
• Base and Height Divisions – Tell the mesher how many divisions over the length and width of plate you want to make when dividing plate into its elements – only available when using ‘structured quadrilaterals’
• Meshing Method – Choose from Automatic, Delaunay, Frontal, and Adaptive meshing methods – only available when using ‘quadrilaterals’
• Granularity – Choose from 5 levels of fineness. 1 represents a very course setting, and 5 represents very fine – only available when using ‘quadrilaterals’

Example

To learn how to create a plate, check out the previous article about how to model plates in Structural 3D.

1) To mesh your plate, click the ‘Mesh’ button at the top right corner inside the ‘Plate’ menu. Alternatively, right click the plate and hit Mesh.

2) In the pop up menu, specify Plate 1 as the ‘Plate Selection’. Select ‘Triangular’, ‘Automatic’, and ‘3’ for this example. Try each selection and method out for yourself until you are happy with the subsequent mesh. Click Mesh.

 

3) The plate has successfully been meshed. Follow the Example in Pressures to learn how to apply a pressure load to a plate.

 

Not Happy with your Mesh?

You can simply right click the plate and hit Mesh again and try different mesh settings. The plate pressures and original attributes will remain in-tact.