Long before structural fire analysis became an OpenSees side hustle, the elasticBeamColumn element was able to handle thermal loads. The -alpha and -depth options are not really Easter eggs so much as undocumented features. Back in 2002, when OpenSees source control used CVS, Scott Hamilton modified the elasticBeamColumn element with two optional parameters for the coefficient of thermal expansion and beam depth. He also defined Beam2dTempLoad to apply temperatures … Continue reading Thermal Loads on an Elastic Beam
Tag: Thermal loads
More Than One Way to Heat Up a Truss
OpenSees can solve every reasonable problem from any structural analysis textbook. But I nearly had a meltdown over a simple truss problem because truss elements in OpenSees do not directly support thermal loading. Consider Example 6.17, shown below, from J.C. Smith’s Structural Analysis. All members of the truss have E=29000 ksi, A=10 inch2, and α=6.5e-6 (coefficient of thermal expansion, … Continue reading More Than One Way to Heat Up a Truss
Minimal Thermal Example
For verification purposes, I needed to come up with the fixed-end axial force for a beam subjected to uniform thermal expansion. It's not rocket science, nowhere near an LPU, but a little pencil and paper and the free end axial deflection is $latex \alpha (\Delta T) L$. The fixed-end axial force, to push the free … Continue reading Minimal Thermal Example
OpenSees Fire v2.0
OpenSees modules for thermal loading and thermo-mechanical behavior were developed by Usmani et al in the early 2010s. This was the first foray for OpenSees outside its earthquake engineering comfort zone and highlighted the benefits of an open, collaborative software framework--an opportunity for the research community to share modeling methodologies, develop new applications, and ensure … Continue reading OpenSees Fire v2.0