The following support limitations and specifications must be observed:
Elastic Supports and Compression Only Supports are not permitted.
Supports should not include any face selections (for example, on 3D solids) that already belong to either the low or high boundaries of the cyclic symmetry sector. Supports may include edges (for example, on 3D solids) on those boundaries, however.
Only the following remote boundary conditions are supported:
Remote Displacement
Point Mass
Spring
Warning: Make sure that the location of the Remote Points does not coincide with the cyclic symmetry axis, as this could generate incorrect results. Two exceptions exist for standalone or MSUP modal analyses: if either a Displacement or a Moment (for a subsequent MSUP) is applied about the cyclic symmetry axis and then to all sectors, it must:
be scoped to a Remote Point that has its Behavior property set to Deformable,
have all DOFs fixed except the DOF about the cyclic symmetry axis, and
the Remote Point must lie on the cyclic axis of symmetry.
In preparation for solution, the boundary conditions on the geometry are converted into node constraints in the mesh (see Converting Boundary Conditions to Nodal DOF Constraints (Mechanical APDL Solver) for more information). When these boundary conditions involve nodes along the sector boundaries (low, high and axial boundaries), their constraints are integrated to properly reflect the symmetry. As an example, the low and high edges may feature more node constraints than are applied to each individually, in order to remain consistent with an equivalent full model.
If the modal analysis is activated as pre-stressed, no other modal loads/supports are allowed. On the other hand you can apply all pertinent structural loads/supports in the previous cyclic static analysis.
When using the Samcef or ABAQUS solver, compatibility of supports with cyclic symmetry is checked internally. If an incompatibility is detected a warning or error message will be displayed, and the solve will be interrupted.