I have four circular tubes with diameter 6mm that are positioned next to each other in a "square" formation, see image. These are held as a bundle at either end. I then need to wrap aluminium tape around them. So I'm trying to simulate this to see how the tape increases/or decreases the first mode of the system.
Initially I used Simulate -> Idealisations - > Beam to create the four tubes and locked displacement at the ends to calculate the first mode. This worked fine and did the analysis in a few seconds. I could not figure out how to correctly add the outer tape to this system. The tape is wrapped around the tubes and has glue on the side facing the tubes. I guess it could be simplified as a thin tube. Should I make an idealisation for the tape, ie as a beam, but how should I connect it to the tubes?
So I tried extruding the tubes and tape, which I set to 0.1mm, but I think the analysis has difficulty with this, suspect that the AutoGEM function has problems with the small features.
Any suggestions?
