Added Mass
The Added Mass node can be used for supplying inertia that is not part of the material itself. Such inertia does not need to be isotropic, in the sense that the inertial effects are not the same in all directions. This is, for example, the case when a structure immersed in a fluid vibrates. The fluid is added to the inertia for acceleration in the direction normal to the boundary, but not tangential to it.
Other uses for added mass are when sheets or strips of a material that is heavy, but having a comparatively low stiffness, are added to a structure. The data for the base material can then be kept unaltered, while the added material is represented purely as added mass.
The value of an added mass can also be negative. You can use such a negative value for adjusting the mass when a part imported from a CAD system does not get exactly the correct total mass due to simplifications of the geometry.
Added mass can exist on domains, boundaries, and edges. The inertial forces from added mass can be written as
where
M
is a diagonal mass distribution matrix. For added mass on a boundary (and for objects of other dimensions), the contribution to the virtual work is:
