Inventor Nastran – Shell midsurface not interacting correctly with another shell? Need help with one last issue
I'm working on the final part of my research project and I'm stuck with what seems to be my last issue.
I'm simulating a compression load applied from the bottom of a plate reinforced with two stiffeners arranged in a cross. One stiffener (the horizontal one in the image) was originally modeled as a solid, but I converted it to a shell using the Midsurface command. The vertical stiffener, however, was modeled directly as a shell surface.
After running the analysis, it looks like the bottom plate isn't interacting correctly with the horizontal stiffener. In the results, that stiffener barely carries any load (it stays mostly blue), which makes me think it may not actually be connected to the surrounding shell elements or that the shell intersections are not being recognized.
I've already tried different contact definitions, continuous meshing, and other approaches, but I still can't get this region to behave correctly.
Has anyone experienced something similar in Inventor Nastran? Is there a recommended way to connect a solid created from a midsurface with another shell that intersects it?
At this point, I feel like I've tried everything I could think of: different surface connectors, bonded and offset contacts, checking and rebuilding the mesh, refining the mesh size, and several other modeling approaches, but nothing seems to fix this specific region.
This is literally the last issue preventing me from finishing my research. I built the entire model by myself, so I'd really appreciate any advice from someone with more experience.
