Applying force to portion of surface

[OakLD]

Hi,

I would like to know, what's the best practice/trick/workaround for applying a force only to a portion of the surface area of the part. It is easy to apply the force to whole surface area of a selected face and works great. However, what I need (and is needed quite often in general), is to apply the force only to small area out of the given face. I.e. in my case it's circa 2x15mm out of face of size 1520x35mm. It's to simulate a touching of a wheel with a heavy load on a (relatively) thin profiled sheet metal rail. I don't need a contact analysis, I am trying to get to know how the steel members receive and distribute load. Mostly I am only filing my FreeCAD FEM skills, nothing serious, though it's a real example.

I should mention, that I tried to make a sketch and apply the force to the sketch, but it didn't work. I tried to model a small pad, but naturally it creates a kind of a mess in the mesh around the pad.

[sgrogan]

I should mention, that I tried to make a sketch and apply the force to the sketch, but it didn't work. I tried to model a small pad, but naturally it creates a kind of a mess in the mesh around the pad.

See: https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Part_BooleanFragments
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 10#p149046
Example:

bf.FCStd

(12.84 KiB) Downloaded 75 times

[OakLD]

Thank you for the links and your example. Thumbs up! Looks like exactly what I was looking for

[bernd]

I should mention, that I tried to make a sketch and apply the force to the sketch, but it didn't work. I tried to model a small pad, but naturally it creates a kind of a mess in the mesh around the pad.

See: https://www.freecadweb.org/wiki/Part_BooleanFragments
https://forum.freecadweb.org/viewtopic. ... 10#p149046
Example:bf.FCStd

Chris, how the hell did you find this post. It actually is exactly what OakLD needs. I would not even have started to search for it because just make it again would be much faster for me than searching for this post !

[sgrogan]

Chris, how the hell did you find this post. It actually is exactly what OakLD needs. I would not even have started to search for it because just make it again would be much faster for me than searching for this post !

"split surface fem"
I remembered the discussion, and being excited about Boolean Fragments

[bernd]

I remembered the discussion, and being excited about Boolean Fragments

Yeah! BooleanFragments made it much more simpler to make models for FEM