Two Paths You Can Go By

I am confident we can use OpenSees to solve every truss, beam, and frame problem from any statics or structural analysis textbook as well as every single degree-of-freedom and rigid shear frame problem from a structural dynamics textbook. We can also solve any reasonable problem from a finite element textbook. My confidence starts to wane … Continue reading Two Paths You Can Go By →

Slender Things

Using fiber sections and the corotational geometric transformation is an easy way to simulate combined material and geometric nonlinearity in column members. A previous post examined this approach for steel columns where residual stresses play an important role in the axial load capacity. In this post, I will show the corotational mesh approach for non-sway … Continue reading Slender Things →

Meshing for Column Loads

For material nonlinear analysis of frame models, you can improve the computed response by using more displacement-based elements or more integration points in a force-based element. The material nonlinearity occurs inside the basic system, also known as the natural system or the kernel. To capture geometric nonlinearity due to large displacements, you have to go … Continue reading Meshing for Column Loads →