Nodal Body

A Nodal Body is a component that may be used to add concentrated mass, buoyancy and hydro loads to the system. Nodal bodies may be attached to an end node or at a node between two segments in a line type definition. It is directly attached to the node and has no degrees of freedom itself. It has the following properties:

  • mass, contributing to volume forces and inertia

  • volume, contributing to buoyancy if the node is below the surface. As no geometry is associated with the nodal body, it is either completely submerged or completely above the surface, depending on the node’s position

  • Drag and added mass coefficients in either the global coordinate system or in the local coordinate system of the beam or bar element that it is attached to

The Nodal Body component is not suitable for modelling a buoy floating at the surface as it is always either completely wet or dry. A partly submerged buoy may instead be modelled using beam or bar elements with the partly submerged Morison load formulation.

For details of the input file please see Nodal Body - input reference.