Line Mesh

The DiscretizeMember function, which dates back many years, was recently superseded by the line mesh command, written by Minjie. In addition to creating boundaries for solid meshes, as shown in this post, you can use line meshes to discretize a frame member (2D or 3D) into beam-column elements--just pass the optional element type and arguments … Continue reading Line Mesh →

Repeated Section Modes

If you use a section with linear-elastic response in the displacement-based, force-based, and mixed beam-column elements in OpenSees, you will get the same response from all three elements. TrueFalseIt depends The answer is it depends on the type of "section with elastic response" you use. Also, I wouldn't include "It depends" as a possible answer … Continue reading Repeated Section Modes →

Direct Moment-Curvature

That the force-based frame element and fiber sections are in an open relationship should come as no surprise. The displacement-based and mixed frame elements can use fiber sections and all three element formulations can use stress resultant sections. While this post used a coupled stress resultant plasticity model, you can also use the section aggregator … Continue reading Direct Moment-Curvature →

There’s Three, Actually

The displacement-based and force-based formulations garner a lot of comparisons for simulating nonlinear frame response. My Google Scholar alerts tell me so. And I even wrote a post comparing the two formulations. Doc Ock from Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse There is a third formulation--the mixed formulation. Alemdar and White compared three frame element formulations (displacement-based, … Continue reading There’s Three, Actually →

Discretized Members Only

I wrote a DiscretizeMember procedure in Tcl many years ago--I don't know exactly when, definitely after the 1980s and definitely before moving to Eastchester. "Members Only." by The Semi-Frozen Trombone is licensed under CC BY 2.0 After carrying the function around for years, and probably spawning more variations than uniaxial Concrete models, the procedure went … Continue reading Discretized Members Only →

Global Distributed Loads

Distributed loads on frame elements in OpenSees are defined with respect to the local element axes as opposed to global axes. This choice made the implementation easy, but it can give OpenSees users more shadow work, like bagging your own groceries or pumping your own gas. When global distributed loads act on inclined elements, e.g., … Continue reading Global Distributed Loads →

A Vector in the x-z Plane

Three-dimensional frame elements require user input for the local element axes. Although the local $latex x$ axis points from node I to node J, there is no automatic way to define the local $latex y$ and $latex z$ axes, i.e., how the section axes line up with the element. In two-dimensions, this is not an … Continue reading A Vector in the x-z Plane →

Integration Points with Negative Weight

A colleague in Eastchester once told me that faculty have three, maybe four, good ideas over their career. In other words, a faculty member could have over a hundred papers, but there's only three or four underlying concepts. Perhaps it was "two, maybe three", but you get the point. Playing with integration points and weights, … Continue reading Integration Points with Negative Weight →

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 →

More Is Not Always Better

I sometimes run across simulations where frame member response is computed using displacement-based beam-column elements with more than two Gauss points per element. These elements require at least two Gauss points to ensure a complete solution and to capture the exact solution for a linear-elastic, prismatic member. While it is well known that you can … Continue reading More Is Not Always Better →