Are the FGCNST and FGCTST stiffness values that the user must input in units of lb/in such as a simple spring, or are they in units of psi such as for solid material.
Slide 26 in the attachment shows an example of face-to-face flexible glue. The original fastener spring values have units of lb/in. But Nastran wants stiffness values entered as smeared values (per unit area). So the units in this example for FGCNST and FGCTST are lb/in^3
Thanks Hanson for that answer. I am surprised to learn that using this feature forces me to manually compute the contact area ahead of time and use that area to properly compute the required stiffness input in lb/in3. This certainly seems like a simple calculation that could be done within nastran since nastran computes the contact area. So I hope the developers at MSC can consider fixing this so that the user can just input the stiffness in lb/in and then have nastran internally compute the required stiffness based on the contact area computed by nastran.
