Surface

This keyword is used to define a surface containing element edges or faces.

*Surface, Type = <surf type>, Name = <surface name>
<set name>, [<face number>]

• Name = <surface name>: Set this parameter equal to the name of the surface. This parameter is mandatory.

• Type = <surf type> specifies if the surface definition is node based or element based:

  • Type = node:

    The <set name> has to be a predefined node set. The definition of a <face number> is not required. numgeo will automatically find all element surfaces defined by the nodes in the specified node set. For this, it is necessary that the node set is (topologically) continuous; see also Figure 1.

    
    Figure 1: Examples of node-based surfaces. Top: correct surface definitions, Bottom: wrong surface definitions (nset-1 is not continuous).

  • Type= element:

    The <set name> has to be a predefined element set. The definition of a <face number> is required. The face number has to be given as e.g. F4 or S4 in case the fourth element faces are assigned to the surface.

Both surface definitions can be used further in the definition of contact pairs (see *Interaction) or distributed surface loads *DSload) .