Hi there, I was just wondering if there was a method of coupling a beam tube element to a shell element model of the same tube as if they were the same tube? I have tried a few methods but seem to et some unrealistic deformation. I am using Abaqus Explicit to run a crash analysis of a spaceframe chassis and I would like to have shell elements at the front of the chassis to model the tubes crushing and use beam elements rearwards to save on computation time. I have attached some images of the proposed setup. Thanks!

Abaqus ​​​​​​​