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About Components

Components are panels and beams that are analyzed to return margins of safety. Cross-section dimensions and materials are assigned and/or optimized for each component.

In FEA projects, components are composed of shell and beam elements. There are several types of components:

Smeared Panels Smeared panel components are composed of shells elements that share the same FEM property/section ID. All shell element properties are assigned to smeared panel components by default during FEM import. See About Smeared Panel Components.
Smeared Beams Smeared beam components are identical to smeared panels except they use beam elements. See About Smeared Beam Components.
Stringer Segments Stringer segment components are combinations shell and beam elements that form a representation of a stiffened panel. See About Stringer Segment Components.

Important: HyperSizer analyzes panel and beam components - not finite elements. A component is collection of finite elements used to represent a panel or beam.