COMSOL 6.2 - The Membrane Interface

The interface (

), found under the branch (

) when adding a physics interface, is mainly used to model prestressed membranes, but can also be used to model a thin cladding on a solid. Membranes can be considered as plane stress elements on boundaries in 3D with a possibility to deform both in the in-plane and out-of-plane directions. There is also a version of the membrane interface for 2D axisymmetric problems. The membrane interface is then applicable to lines since that is what represents boundaries.

The difference between a shell and a membrane is that the membrane does not have any bending stiffness. In most applications, the membrane is used by itself and not as a cladding. A tensile prestress is then necessary in order to avoid singularity because a membrane with no stress or compressive stress has no transverse stiffness. To include the prestress effect, you must enable geometric nonlinearity for the study step.

The Linear Elastic Material is the default material, which adds a linear elastic equation for the displacements and has a Settings window to define the elastic material properties. This material model can also be combined with viscoelasticity.

With the Nonlinear Structural Materials Module, you can also model Nonlinear Elastic and Hyperelastic materials, and add options such as Plasticity, Creep, and Viscoplasticity.

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When this physics interface is added, these default nodes are also added to the : , (a condition where edges are free, with no loads or constraints), and . In the case if axial symmetry, an node is also added. From the toolbar, you can then add other nodes that implement, for example, loads and constraints. You can also right-click to select physics features from the context menu.

The is the default physics interface name.

The is used primarily as a scope prefix for variables defined by the physics interface. Refer to such physics interface variables in expressions using the pattern <name>.<variable_name>. In order to distinguish between variables belonging to different physics interfaces, the name string must be unique. Only letters, numbers, and underscores (_) are permitted in the field. The first character must be a letter.

The default (for the first physics interface in the model) is mbrn.

From the list, select (the default) or . Use to treat the elastic behavior as quasistatic (with no mass effects; that is, no second-order time derivatives). Selecting this option gives a more efficient solution for problems where the variation in time is slow when compared to the natural frequencies of the system.

For problems with creep, and sometimes viscoelasticity, the problem can be considered as quasistatic. This is also the case when the time dependence exists only in some other physics, like a transient heat transfer problem causing thermal strains.

In the Membrane interface you can choose not only the order of the discretization, but also the type of shape functions: Lagrange or serendipity. For highly distorted elements, Lagrange shape functions provide better accuracy than serendipity shape functions of the same order. The serendipity shape functions will however give significant reductions of the model size for a given mesh containing quadrilateral elements.

The default is to use shape functions for the .

The dependent variable (field variable) is for the u which has three components (u, v, and w). The name can be changed but the names of fields and dependent variables must be unique within a model.