-
The behavior of beam elements can be determined by numerical integration
of the section or can be given directly in terms of area, moments of inertia,
and torsional constant.
-
When defining beam cross-section properties numerically, you can have
the section properties calculated once at the beginning of the analysis (linear
elastic material behavior is assumed) or throughout the analysis (linear or
nonlinear material behavior is permitted).
-
Abaqus
includes a number of standard cross-section shapes. Other shapes, provided they
are “thin-walled,” can be modeled using the ARBITRARY cross-section.
-
The orientation of the cross-section must be defined either by
specifying a third node or by defining a normal vector as part of the element
property definition. The normals can be plotted in
the Visualization module
of
Abaqus/CAE.
-
The beam cross-section can be offset from the nodes that define the
beam. This procedure is useful in modeling stiffeners on shells.
-
The linear and quadratic beams include the effects of shear deformation.
The cubic beams in
Abaqus/Standard
do not account for shear flexibility. The open-section beam elements in
Abaqus/Standard
correctly model the effects of torsion and warping (including warping
constraints) in thin-walled, open sections.
-
Multi-point constraints, constraint equations, and connectors can be
used to connect degrees of freedom at nodes to model pinned connections, rigid
links, etc.
-
“Bending moment”-type plots allow the results of one-dimensional
elements, such as beams, to be visualized easily.
-
Display options allow you to render beam profiles for an enhanced
graphical representation of the model.
-
Hard copies of
Abaqus/CAE
plots can be obtained in PostScript (PS),
Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Tag Image File
Format (TIFF), Portable Network Graphics
(PNG), and Scalable Vector Graphics
(SVG) formats.