That’s a Large Mass

After cutting through all the spam, you'll find some good posts on the OpenSees message board. In one such post, Ahmet Alper Parker asked about the large mass method (LMM) and if it can be implemented in OpenSees. I was not familiar with the LMM, so Ahmet pointed me to this paper. The basic idea … Continue reading That’s a Large Mass →

Absolutely, It’s Relative

One of the most frequently asked OpenSees questions is whether node recorders record absolute or relative displacement (relative to the ground) when a model is subjected to a uniform excitation. There's several approaches to find the answer to this question. One solution is to apply a simple uniform excitation--like a constant ground acceleration--to an SDF … Continue reading Absolutely, It’s Relative →

The Rayleigh Quotient

Eigenvalue analysis wasn't giving me what I wanted the other day. So, to make a long story short, I decided to try Rayleigh's method. I won't go through all the details of Rayleigh's method, but the basic idea is you can obtain a very good approximation of the fundamental frequency of a structural model by … Continue reading The Rayleigh Quotient →

Reaction and Unbalance

A confluence of recent inquiries led me to take a look at what the nodeReaction and nodeUnbalance commands return in an OpenSees dynamic analysis. While I have a pretty good handle on nodeReaction, going in to this post, I was unsure about nodeUnbalance. We can learn a lot from a couple springs, so I created … Continue reading Reaction and Unbalance →

Mass and Weight

Many structural analysis software programs will automatically define mass based on the input gravity loads. OpenSees is not one of those programs. You have to define mass and weight separately. Fortunately, using variables for units makes the mass and weight definitions easy. Plus, if using customary units, you won't have to waste time Googling the … Continue reading Mass and Weight →

Last Committed Stiffness

With the rayleigh command, OpenSees allows you to input three stiffness proportional damping factors: 1) the current tangent stiffness, 2) the initial stiffness, and 3) the last committed stiffness. Each option has drawbacks. The current tangent stiffness is problematic because the tangent stiffness can change significantly at each iteration of the equilibrium solution algorithm. The … Continue reading Last Committed Stiffness →

Rayleigh Damping Coefficients

One of the best examples of "offline" calculations you can easily avoid in OpenSees is Rayleigh damping coefficients. I've seen people hard code the mass and stiffness proportional damping coefficients in their OpenSees scripts, after computing said coefficients in another software, e.g., MATLAB, or on paper. Inevitably, it becomes difficult to keep your OpenSees model … Continue reading Rayleigh Damping Coefficients →

Pushover with Constant Ground Jerk

A graduate student and I are developing an OpenSees model of the water tower described in this paper. Thankfully, the model is pretty straightforward, i.e., reproducible from what's written in the paper. The authors of the paper did a pushover analysis of the water tower using dynamic response to a "slow, ramped, horizontal ground acceleration … Continue reading Pushover with Constant Ground Jerk →

Gimme All Your Damping, All Your Mass and Stiffness Too

Just because OpenSees is open source does not mean it is a fully transparent box. This is mostly because documentation has lagged behind development. So, pessimists would say the box is semi-opaque while optimists would characterize it as semi-transparent. But a few parts of OpenSees are definitely housed in an opaque box. Take, for instance, … Continue reading Gimme All Your Damping, All Your Mass and Stiffness Too →