BodyLoadAssignment Properties

(To be removed) Body load assignments

BodyLoadAssignment will be removed. Use the CellLoad and FaceLoad properties of femodel instead. (since R2023a) For more information on updating your code, see Version History.

A BodyLoadAssignment object contains a description of the body loads for a structural analysis model. A StructuralModel container has a vector of BodyLoadAssignment objects in its BodyLoads.BodyLoadAssignments property.

To create body load assignments for your structural analysis model, use the structuralBodyLoad function.

Properties of BodyLoadAssignment

RegionType — Region type

'Face' | 'Cell'

Region type, specified as 'Face' for a 2-D region or 'Cell' for a 3-D region.

Data Types: char | string

RegionID — Region ID

vector of positive integers

Region ID, specified as a vector of positive integers. To determine which ID corresponds to which portion of the geometry, use the pdegplot function, setting 'FaceLabels' to 'on'.

Data Types: double

GravitationalAcceleration — Acceleration due to gravity

numeric vector

Acceleration due to gravity, specified as a numeric vector. This property must be specified in units consistent with those of the geometry and material properties.

Example: structuralBodyLoad(structuralmodel,'GravitationalAcceleration',[0,0,-9.8])

Data Types: double

AngularVelocity — Angular velocity for axisymmetric model

positive number

Angular velocity for an axisymmetric model, specified as a positive number. This property must be specified in units consistent with those of the geometry and material properties.

Example: structuralBodyLoad(structuralmodel,'AngularVelocity',2.3)

Data Types: double

Temperature — Thermal load

real number | StaticThermalResults object | TransientThermalResults object

Thermal load, specified as a real number, a StaticThermalResults object, or a TransientThermalResults object. This property must be specified in units consistent with those of the geometry and material properties.

Example: structuralBodyLoad(structuralmodel,'Temperature',300)

Data Types: double

TimeStep — Time index for thermal load

positive integer

Time index for thermal load, specified as a positive integer.

Example: structuralBodyLoad(structuralmodel,'Temperature',Tresults,'TimeStep',21)

Data Types: double

Label — Label for use with linearizeInput

character vector | string

Label for use with linearizeInput, specified as a character vector or a string.

Data Types: char | string

Version History

Introduced in R2017b

R2025a: To be removed

BodyLoadAssignment will be removed. Use the CellLoad and FaceLoad properties of femodel instead.

For example, you can check the body loads for all cells as follows.

model = femodel(AnalysisType="structuralStatic", ...
                Geometry="Block.stl");
model.CellLoad = cellLoad(Gravity=[0 0 -9.8]);
model.CellLoad

Alternatively, you can check the body loads on particular cells.

model.CellLoad(1)

The unified finite element model workflow defines the type of a problem and all of its parameters as the properties of an femodel object. This object enables you to specify physical parameters for structural, thermal, and electromagnetic types of analyses. The solver in the unified workflow uses only the parameters (properties) appropriate for the current analysis type while ignoring all other properties. If you switch the analysis type by setting the AnalysisType property of the model, the solver uses the appropriate set of properties corresponding to the new analysis type.

For more help migrating your existing code that uses StructuralModel to the unified finite element workflow, see Migration from Domain-Specific to Unified Workflow.