An FE body represents the motion of a deformable body with the degrees of freedom proportional to the number of nodes which belong to the body, or the number of modes. The deformation and motion of the body are represented by the motion of its nodes. This body basically consists of material, node and finite elements. The body can be classified in terms of formulation as one of two types, as follows.
Figure 3.2: List of mesh bodies
| Type | Description |
| Nodal FE Body | Use to define a flexible body by the nodal method. This body is created by importing a mesh file which is generated by the Motion Preprocessor. The body is represented by nodes, finite elements and material and its mass, mass of moment of inertia and mass center are calculated automatically. The degrees of freedom of the body are dependent on the number of nodes. |
| Modal FE Body | Use to define a flexible body by the modal synthesis method. This body is created by importing a mesh file which is generated by the Motion Preprocessor. The body is represented by nodes, finite elements, material, eigenvalue and eigenvector and its mass, mass of moment of inertia, mass center are calculated automatically. The degrees of freedom of the body correspond to the number of modes. |