Use pipe elements to represent straight, slender to moderately stubby/thick pipe structures. The elements are especially useful in the offshore drilling industry, as their cross-section data includes interior fluid and outside insulation.
A pipe element is a special form of beam element. As with beams, pipe elements are created by meshing lines or curves, and the elements must be associated with section data. A pipe differs from a beam in the following ways, however:
A pipe cross-section is normally axisymmetric so that the bending resistance is the same in both directions.
Element orientation (via an orientation node) is still necessary, however, as the element loads can differ in the y and z directions.
A pipe can account for both internal and external pressures.
A pipe element has support for many nonlinear material models.
The available pipe element types are:
Both elements are based on Timoshenko beam theory which includes shear-deformation effects.
Also available is ELBOW290, a special 3-D three-node pipe used for modeling curved pipes. The element can account for cross-sectional distortion.