A Mr. Richard Feder from Fort Lee, New Jersey wrote in:
I am designing a tank that will be filled with water. I was wondering how to apply a pressure that changes from the surface to the bottom.
Software Quality Assurance Engineer, Hugh Henderson, provided the answer:
At this time there isn't a hydrostatic pressure load in the Advanced Simulation Technology Preview (ASTP). Thank you for the suggestion. Instead there is a workaround that can be used from Inventor Finite Element Analysis (FEA). The same idea can be used in ASTP. It is not perfect, but it does get a meaningful result.
Use pressure and the Split face method. This is analogous to using to the Riemann sum as an estimate for the "area under the curve" in Integral Calculus.
Pressure = density * gravitational acceleration * depth
(P = rho * g * delta_h)
Calculate the depth at the centroid of the split face band. In this case, we can neglect the atmospheric pressure, since it acts on the outside of the vessel as well as on free surface of the liquid.
Of course, you can get more accurate results by increasing the number of "bands" as the height of the band approaches zero.
Responding to feedback is alive in the lab.