EleTol>ElEdit>Check>Surface Loading>Check in LS-PrePost appears to be working well for displaying fringe plots of applied pressure using version 4.7 dated May 15, 2019 or later. One can do this reading only the keyword input data or reading both the keyword and d3plot together. The capability currently supports only the following keywords: *LOAD_SEGMENT, *LOAD_SEGMENT_SET, *LOAD_SHELL_ELEMENT, and *LOAD_SHELL_SET. Only pressures defined using LCID with *DEFINE_CURVE can be fringed. More from bug 9685 ... "... now may be a good time to consider certain non-critical enhancements. If they're difficult to implement, then feel free to decline this request. It would be useful if: - the fringe range were automatically set based on what elements are displayed, just as is done when using Post>FriComp - the user had the option to specify the number of fringes and the range of fringe values, just as in Post>FriRang" ______________________________________________________________ For situations not handled by EleTol>ElEdit>Check>Surface Loading>Check, there is an indirect way to visualize the applied surface pressure. This is done by creating a shell part made of *MAT_NULL on the outer surface of the real part. Instead of applying the pressure to the real part it is instead applied to the null shell part. The null shell part is connected to the real part with *CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE. The contact interaction forces are recorded with *DATABASE_BINARY_INTFOR, and "Interface Pressure" from that database should be the applied pressure (note that s=intfor must be added to the execution line to create the intfor file). The density of the *MAT_NULL part should be kept low, so its mass doesn't influence the response of the real part. *CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURACE is constraint-based and cannot be applied to rigid parts. If the real part is rigid, then *CONTACT_TIED_SURFACE_TO_SURFACE_OFFSET should be used, but since it is penalty-based the forces/pressures from INTFOR may be rather noisy. This technique is illustrated in the example http://ftp.lstc.com/anonymous/outgoing/support/EXAMPLES/p_visualize.k . In the example, a blast load is applied to the null shell part. Those blast pressures are unknown a priori, but computed on-the-fly by LS-DYNA. They are recorded in a special binary database called BLSTFOR. "Pressure" from BLSTFOR should agree with "Interface Pressure" in INTFOR. Ticket#2018080810000062 _____________________________________________________ Fringing "pressure" in LSPP displays element mean stress, that is, -(x-stress + y-stress +z-stress)/3. That's not the same as the external pressure applied to the surface.