General Content on Plates & Surface (Shell Element) in

STAAD Pro

Plate element versus shell element

Both terms represent the same thing in the STAAD context, which is, a 3-noded
(triangular) or a 4-noded (quadrilateral) element to which a thickness has to be
assigned as a property. This is commonly referred to as a 2D finite element. In
STAAD, this element has both attributes - membrane (in-plane effect) and
bending (out-of-plane effect). The bending effect can be shut off by declaring it
as ELEMENT PLANE STRESS. The in-plane effect can't be shut off.
There is another type of element in STAAD called a solid element which is a 3d
finite element. It is shaped like a prism or wedge or a block or many other
shapes that can be formed by 4 thru 8 nodes where no more than 4 nodes lie in
one plane.

Plate Element verus a surface

If you want model a structure which contains a wall, slab or panel type
component, you have two choices in STAAD:
a) Model that panel using a collection of individual elements. This is called a
finite element mesh. This is an assembly of the 2d triangular and/or
quadrilateral elements described above.
b) Model that as a single physical object called a Surface.

Option (a) is achieved using the mesh generation facilities in STAAD.

Alternatively, you can do the mesh generation using any other software that has
meshing capabilities, export the data to a DXF or CIS/2 file, and then import that
DXF or CIS/2 into STAAD.
In option (b), (surface object), what happens under the hood is that, during the
analysis, STAAD transforms the surface into a finite element mesh. The type of
mesh (number of elements, type of elements, size of elements, etc.) that is
generated from the surface is based on the parameters that you provide at the
time of defining the surface. The details of the mesh thus generated are to a
large extent, masked from the user. Results are presented for that surface, not
for the individual elements that it is made up of.

To give you an analogy, think of the surface as a chess board, and the plate
element as the individual squares in that board. You can define the chess board
as 64 elements (option a) or 1 surface (option b).

Your question:
1. Is there any INACTIVE or IGNORE STIFFNESS facility for SURFACE
ELEMENT like the one for member and Plate element?
Answer: No.
------------------------------------------Your question:
2. In modelling a R.C.C shear wall structure is it necessary to model
SHEAR WALL with SURFACE ELEMENT? Why not modelled it with
either PLATE ELEMENT or MEMBER i.e. COLUMN member?
Answer:
In STAAD, a shear wall has to be modelled using Surface Element(s) if and only if
you intend to perform an RC design on that shear wall. If it is modelled using a
mesh of plate elements, the program would have had to reconstruct a physical
wall from those elements during the RC design phase, and obtain the forces and
moments at certain specific sections along the height of the wall. This is quite a
tedious process and fraught with errors. When the shear wall is modelled as a
surface entity, it has a better understanding of the elements that constitute the
wall since the meshing is done internally during the analysis process, and thus,
gathering the required results for wall design becomes easier.
However, if an RC design of the shear wall is not needed, you can model it using
elements, as demonstrated in example 9 in the Application examples section of
the program documentation.
Though some people model a wall as a column member, it is not recommended
since a wall being a 2-dimensional entity has Poisson effect, which means a load,
applied along one direction causes it to deform along a perpendicular direction. I
don't know how this effect can be captured if it is modelled as a member.