Exporting Data for NASTRAN

MSC.Nastran (also MD Nastran) Stress Recovery is the process of exporting the modal deformations of a flexible body from an Adams simulation to MSC.Nastran. A MSC.Nastran restart analysis is then performed to recover dynamic stresses or strains on the finite-element model of the flexible body. This process assumes that the flexible body originated from a finite-element model in MSC.Nastran (that is, a MSC.Nastran analysis was performed, the MNF of the flexible body was created using ADAMSMNF statement and the database which includes .MASTER and DBALL is kept).

The FEMDATA and OUTPUT statements can also be used to export modal deformations to a NASTRAN formatted file for stress or strain recovery. MSC.Nastran format, OUTPUT2 is only supported.

By definition, the modal deformations (coordinates) are unitless quantities, so the modal stresses (or strains) will be recovered correctly in MSC.Nastran regardless of the unit settings in the Adams and MSC.Nastran models. Rigid body motion of the flexible body is also included in the modal deformation file. In addition, the unit of length in the Adams model must be consistent with that in the MSC.Nastran model for the overall displacement of the component to be recovered correctly.