Because continuum shell elements have a thickness direction associated with them, you must orient the elements correctly. Continuum shell elements are similar to gasket elements in that you can assign them only to regions of a native Abaqus/CAE mesh that you meshed using the top-down swept meshing technique or the bottom-up meshing technique. Swept meshing ensures that the mesh stack orientation is consistent; bottom-up meshing requires you to verify and, if necessary, correct the stack orientation.

The sweep path starts at the bottom face of the stack and continues to the top face of the stack. The stacking direction and thickness direction are both defined to be the direction from the bottom face to the top face. When you are creating a swept mesh, you can use the Mesh Controls dialog box to redefine the sweep path. As a result, you can change the orientation of the continuum shell elements in an Abaqus native mesh by changing the direction of the sweep path and regenerating the mesh. For more information, see “Specifying the sweep path,” Section 17.17.6.

You can also assign continuum shell elements to an orphan mesh part in the Mesh module. You can use the Query toolset to determine which faces are designated as the bottom face and the top face and to look for inconsistent orientation between elements. For more information, see “Obtaining general information about the model,” Section 68.2.2. If necessary, you can use the Edit Mesh toolset to change the mesh stack orientation. For more information, see “Orienting the stack direction,” Section 61.6.4. You can use these tools only with hexahedral, wedge, and quadrilateral elements because these are the only elements that can be stacked to form a continuum shell or gasket mesh.

If you cannot mesh a region with a swept mesh, or if you cannot create a bottom-up mesh with the correct orientation, you can mesh the region with a different technique and save it as an orphan mesh. You can then use the Query toolset to view the orientation of the elements, and you can use the Edit Mesh toolset to change the mesh stack orientation, provided the mesh is uniform.