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Member design in
FEA MOST
I got a really interesting question on my email from POPULAR
Fateme. I wanted to address this issue so many
times now, so <nally there is a great occasion to do
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this! Test your FEA
skills!
Quiz (2-3 min.)

In Abaqus, can we review the capability of a !

structural member? All about
Buckling
Whether or not it can bear the load like: shear,
Analysis
bending, twisting, axial etc.? posted on August
20th, 2019

!
This issue seems trivial, but I’ve seen a lot of people FEA by Hand
posted on March 9th,
wasting a lot of time around it!
2019

Let’s start with how you can actually design a !

structural member!
How Accurate
is FEA?
posted on February
3rd, 2019
Code design and member capacity
!
Linear vs
Nonlinear FEA!
It’s obvious that structural members design is a very
posted on February
important part of engineering. This is especially 20th, 2019

true in civil engineering! This is simply because you

build most structures from various members (and
plates).
Stay
Through the years we have developed a lot of newsletter
updated!
different codes that guide the member design. Of
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course, those usually differ from country to country.
directly to your inbox.
I.e. you will use ANSI/AISC 360 in US or EN 1993-1-
1 in the European Union (almost entire Europe uses
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As we learned more and more about structures

those codes became more and more sophisticated.
Right now they do not only dictate how to verify if
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the member has suWcient capacity. There are rules
for a lot of different structures types. You can <nd
information there about frame stability, or how to Search... "
calculate members and connections in trusses etc.

Codes provide set of mathematical equations

(usually) that when used allow verifying the CATEGORIES
member you wish to calculate. Usually, you can do
everything by hand as long as you know the internal
forces and cross-section properties of the member FEA: Basics

you wish to analyze. FEA: Intermediate

Another important thing about codes is that they FEA: Advanced

also provide test-based buckling curves for most

problems. This means that when you calculate a FEA Design Tips
column against buckling under compression the
Benchmarks
code will assume “proper” imperfections for the
problem. This is an important factor. You simply FEA Topics:
can’t erect a building that is “perfect”. All shape
• Linear Analysis
mistakes, accidental eccentricities etc. may greatly
reduce capacity due to buckling or lateral torsional • Nonlinear
buckling. Codes take that into account basing on Analysis
extensive research and engineering experience
• Meshing
gathered in the past.
• Boundary
Similarly, you can’t design everything with a simple Conditions
“bending moment divided by section modulus”. In
• Post Processing
many member types (like concrete beams) a lot of
sophisticated rules were in place. Those rules allow • Contact

to correctly foresee the member capacity. • Linear Buckling

Case Studies

To sum this up Structural Design

Topics:
Member design is usually performed in
accordance with the codes. • Structural Steel

Codes vary from country to country but • Stability

there are a few (like ANSI and EN 1993) • Connections
that are recognized around the world.
Basic Engineering
Codes provide rules for member design, Concepts
that take into account imperfections and
Art of Engineering
complex member behaviors.
Q&A
To calculate a member you need to know
RFEM
internal forces and geometric
characteristic of this member. When you FEMAP
do, you can calculate the “rest” by hand
Events
according to a proper code-procedure.

More complex problems like frames

 stability and interaction between different
structural elements are also described in
codes. Thos usually can greatly inPuence Free FEA
the design of singular members.
essentials
course!
Where FEA kicks in? First Name

It’s high time to wonder where FEA helps : )

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Did you notice that I mentioned you need to

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calculate internal forces of the element you wish to
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design? In simple problems, you can easily do this
More
by hand… but in structures like that:
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skills! only 3 min.

There are literally thousands of elements in the

trusses on the picture above. It is possible to
calculate internal forces by hand in such situation…
but you really don’t want to do that to yourself!

It is much faster, and to some degree more precise

(assuming you know what you are doing) to make
an FEA model. When analyzed the model will
provide you with all the internal forces in each
member. Usually, you also get all the geometric
properties of cross-sections.
This is a great help, as in speeds up the process
greatly! You also get deformations (which usually
look far better on pictures : p) so you can check if
your model deforms acceptably. If you want to learn
more about FEA, you can always take my free FEA
essentials course.

All in all, outcomes can look like this:

Looks great right… but there is one thing a lot of

people miss…

FEA is not all – don’t miss out on

the additional step!

It seems great to hear, that FEA will do the design

for you… but there is something I didn’t mention in
the previous chapter on purpose. You see, after FEA
calculations you still have several thousands of
elements you need to verify against code checks.
This veri<cation can be done with hand
calculations, you can even make a script that does
it for you. Whatever you chose there is still a lot you
need to do!

This is where things are getting tiresome!

In short, I would divide FEA software into two
categories:

Advanced general FEA soft. You know this is

the FEA software you would think about.
Programs like Ansys, Abaqus, Nastran (that I
use here) etc. Usually, the possibilities of
those packages are very high. You can solve a
lot of complex problems with them. But also,
they do not have the “codes” implemented.
This means that the software won’t do the
code checks “for you”. You need to do it
manually later or use more advanced
numerical procedures.

“Civil engineering” FEA soft. If you are not a

civil engineer this is something you may not
have heard before. Those are the programs
like RFEM (which I really like and use here),
SAP2000, Autodesk Robot and much more.
Those programs are intended for civil
engineering. Some allow only for beam
elements, some allow plates and solids as
well. Whatever the case may be, they do not
have capacities of the advanced FEA soft for
sure. You can do nonlinear analysis in almost
all of them right now, but the post-critical
analysis is more or less impossible. There are
of course a lot of other limitations, not great
mesh control etc. However, they have a huge
advantage: codes are implemented in those
programs! This means that the program
automatically will do a lot of code checks for
you, thus saving you a lot of effort.

Designing beams in both types of programs have

positive and negative sides. Let’s discuss them
briehy!

Member design with “civil

engineering” FEA soft

I will start with the civil engineering soft as it is

simpler to discuss : )

The outcome of the design you will get is in

percentages (as of percentage of the maximal
capacity ratio used). This means that if the beam is
at 50% you can load it more – there is still 50%
capacity not used.

You should remember that not everything in such

software is FEA. Sure, FEA does provide a static
solution, internal forces, deformations etc. But the
“percentages” and every possible code check that is
performed has nothing to do with FEA. Part of the
software simply imports FEA outcomes to the place
where code procedures are performed. You can
think about is as an “Excel sheet”. Software imports
internal forces there and the sheet calculates
everything according to the code procedures.

Positives:

Does the work for you!

Harder to make mistake in getting the
“data” out
Faster!

Negatives:

Not as many analysis possibilities as

“advanced FEA soft.”
Usually code calculations require a lot of
assumptions. Those should be deVned in
the software, but people often are
unaware of it. This may lead to wrong
design.

Member design with “advanced”

FEA soft.

This is a bit more tricky. You can of course just do

the static calculations here. Then export the
outcomes somewhere (scripting will be helpful
here) and simply do code checks elsewhere. Excel
sheets seems to be a great choice of course : )

However this is still manual work, so instead people

try to “automate” it more. Current codes, for
instance, allow for imperfections to be implemented
“geometrically”. This means that instead of
following the code procedure (especially if you use
EN 1993-1-1) you can implement geometrical
imperfections and just do stress analysis!

However de<ning those imperfections is a lot of

work. This won’t always greatly speed up
calculations. This is especially true since there are
several different imperfections types, and they can
interact with each other, creating nasty
combinations. Sadly in advanced FEA software not
much more possibilities exist. Sometimes you will
also have to model beams as a set of plates simply
to be able to take some effects into account (like
lateral torsional buckling).

Of course, you can simply do a stress design.

Literally, any software can calculate the stress in a
member, based on its cross-section. Sadly such
approach does not take into account a lot of
elements (concrete member design anyone?), so I
would be very careful with this approach.

Positives:

More advanced calculation options

Better solver control with different
parameters
 Negatives:

No code design implemented

Quite a lot of additional work to perform
capacity design

There is a lot more to this subject for sure – I will try

to expand on it in future : )

Want to learn more?

As you can see I run a regular QnA posts here. If

you have any questions just leave them in the
comments, send me them on Linkedin or by email:
enterfea@enterfea.com : )

If you like FEA, you can learn some useful things in

my free FEA essentials course.

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essentials
course!
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3 Comments

Jorge Olalde October 31, 2017 at 12:16 pm - Reply

Thanks for the article. Just to mention,

there is another set of software wich I
would say that can lay in the middle of
what you mentioned, I mean addons to
FE aprograms, such as CivilFEM and
ANSYS. I’m not actually a user, but I
believe that you can make code chekings
in CivilFEM.
Regards,

Ievgen March 6, 2020 at 3:03 pm - Reply

Thank for the post. I am thinking a lot

right now about to learn some general
FEA software for very special cases,
hence it was interesting to read you
opinion.

Diana FEA is also the software like Jorge

has said, general + code checks. I have
not used it, but on their web site they
con<rm that code checks are
implemented.

BR, Ievgen
 Łukasz Skotny March 6, 2020 at 5:11 pm -
Reply

Hey

In my experience software
connecting “general FEA” and code
checks offer the worst parts of
both worlds… but I never have seen
Diana so maybe that is different…

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