Every element in a model is associated with a coordinate system that, by default, is aligned with the global Cartesian coordinate system. If any of the X, Y, or Z axes of an individual element is rotated, the resulting coordinate system will typically not be aligned with the global Cartesian coordinate system. Using this feature, you can display elemental result rotations either as Euler rotated triads at each element's centroid, or as contours that represent an Euler rotation angle about an individual elemental axis. Shell stresses are highly dependent upon Euler angles.
Note: Euler rotated triads and contours of Euler rotation angles are determined by the element type and not all elements types are supported. If no result data is available for the corresponding element type, then the triads display as global triads.
To display elemental coordinate systems results:
Highlight the Solution object, and choose one of the following options from the Coordinate Systems drop-down menu. A corresponding object will be inserted in the tree.
Elemental Triads: Displays an XYZ triad at each element centroid representing the resulting rotation of the element's coordinate system compared to the global Cartesian coordinate system. See Rotational Order of Coordinate System Results for details.
Elemental Euler XY Angle: Displays a contour plot representing the magnitude of the resulting Euler angle rotation at each element centroid about the Z axis.
Elemental Euler YZ Angle: Displays a contour plot representing the magnitude of the resulting Euler angle rotation at each element centroid about the X axis.
Elemental Euler XZ Angle: Displays a contour plot representing the magnitude of the resulting Euler angle rotation at each element centroid about the Y axis.
Note: For the Mechanical APDL solver, it is possible for elemental coordinate systems to vary from:
Time step to time step.
Node to node. In this case, Mechanical displays the angles for the first node in the node number sequence. For line elements, like beams, the result file does not contain the elemental Euler angles and as a result Mechanical calculates the coordinate system from the (x, y, z) positions of the nodes (including the orientation node). Currently, Mechanical does not have access to the internal nodes created by the solver. Because of these calculations, the triad for a line element can differ from the triad displayed by the Mechanical APDL application if you have issued the //PSYMB,ESYS,ON command and the Mechanical APDL application has access to the Mechanical APDL db file.