Hi,

I'm struggling with the nodal force extraction. Imagine that I have flat component made from shell elements (global XY plane). This component is attached to some solid elements, that are under it, by using the tie contacts. This is simplified modeling of bolted joint. The solid elements are for the spacer modeling, and the bolt head has not been included for this simplified approach.

I would like to extract the internal nodal forces from the external edge of tie contact zone.

I imagine that I should go to the Abaqus Viewer, unselect the shell elements from the tie contact area (in order to avoid local equilibrium), indicate the nodes from the edge of selection, and somehow read the resultant nodal forces.

I would be even fine with displaying the nodal force vectors with their values, there is not too much nodes, so I could calculate the resultant forces by my own.

I'm only interested in global X and Y force values, so I also don't care about the anchor point.

When I go to the Free Body Cut tool, I get the message that NFORC output does not exist in the database, but I asked for all nodal results. To be more, when I ask in particular for the NFORC in my input file:

*OUTPUT, FIELD
*NODE OUTPUT
U,RF,NFORC,
*ELEMENT OUTPUT, ELSET = HEAT_SHIELD
S,
*ELEMENT OUTPUT, ELSET = Shield_3D
S,

I end with following error:

***ERROR: UNIDENTIFIED OR INVALID OUTPUT REQUEST NFORC
***NOTE: DUE TO AN INPUT ERROR THE ANALYSIS PRE-PROCESSOR HAS BEEN UNABLE TO
INTERPRET SOME DATA. SUBSEQUENT ERRORS MAY BE CAUSED BY THIS OMISSION

Summarizing, I would like to see how selected elements impact on on unselected (tie contact area), along the edge of selection. It would help me to understand the shear force in the joint.

Can somone help me with this?

Regards,
Dariusz