Meshing a Flange with Bolts

Hello,

I am trying to mesh a pipe Flange that has 4 Bolt holes. The Flange and the mating 4 hexagonal headed Bolts are made of different materials. I am not modeling any contact phenomena between the Flange and the Bolts. Just a static linear analysis. I would like to mesh in such a way that I can assign 2 different materials to the two (Flange v/s Bolts). One for the Flange and another material for the Bolts by grouping. Also the meshes must knit well together i.e. the nodes on the Bolts must be common with those of the Flange at their interface(s).

How can I do this in Salome?

A) I tried the "Fuse" operation successively (Flange+Bolt_1 = Fuse_1); (Fuse_1+Bolt_2=Fuse_2), etc. until Fuse_4 consists of the Flange + all 4 Bolts. After meshing Fuse_4(using Netgen-1D-2D-3D) however there seems to be no easy way to group the elements into 2 types (i.e. "Flange" and "Bolts") for UNV export.

Then I tried the "Compound" operation successively (Compound_1 = Flange + Bolt_1); Compound_2 = Compound_1 + Bolt_2); etc, but this final Compound_4 will not mesh using Netgen-1D-2D-3D. I have tried meshing each (Compound_1; Compound_2, etc) one by one and still failed to mesh any of them.

I have run out of ideas. Any suggestions? I intend using Code-Aster as the solver. If anybody has a different methodology for approaching this please explain. Thank you.

Regards,
JMB

Try my reply to the message 'assembly with more than 2 parts' below.
Good luck
Andy

Andy Foan wrote:

Try my reply to the message 'assembly with more than 2 parts' below.
Good luck
Andy

Hello Andy Foan,

Thank you very much for directing me to that message. A method similar to what you had stated worked!

Regards,
JMB