Tendons modeled as loads

For tendons modeled as loads, if any portion of the Tendon passes through the Bounding box of an element, load from the tendon is transferred to that element.

These loads (distributed and concentrated) are statically transformed and applied to the joints of any bounding object. (In this discussion, a bounding object is the bounding box of any object in the group specified to be loaded by the tendon.) In V12.0.2 and earlier, it was possible for loads to get lost if part of the tendon fell outside of any bounding object. In V14.0.0, we are changing this so that loads outside of a bounding object will be applied to the nearest joint that connects to any bounding object. In this way, the entire system of applied tendon loads should now be self-equilibrating.

Tendons modeled as elements

For tendons modeled as elements, if any discretization point (i.e., either end of a discretization segment) falls within the bounding box of an element, that point is connected by an Interpolation constraint to all joints of that element. This means that for large discretizations, the tendon may not actually be connected to every element through which it passes.

For tendons modeled as elements, the tension at each end of a tendon object is converted to an equivalent strain, and applied as a strain load to the tendon object. This does not depend on whether the tendon is contained in a bounding object or not.

Tips

• You can use Display > Show Load > Tendons > Show calculated values… to see the loads that have been calculated along the length of a tendon due to the specified tension and losses.