LogFAQs > #934905537

teepan95 posted...

Interesting

What do they tend to represent?

In dynamic, represents a building damping ratio. Buildings have various components that aren't modeled as part of the structure, but dissipate some of the shaking energy. For convenience these are not modeled directly, but lumped together as damping ratio which generates forces proportional to velocity. If you have a technical background, you might be familiar with [ma(t) + cv(t) + ku(t) = p(t)]. We assume a damping ratio and generate a matrix of C coefficients.

In 2D Finite Element modeling, structural components are typically divided/meshed into quads or triangles in x,y,z dimensional space. The prototypical stiffness properties of a quad or triangle is in , , , and individual quad/triangle properties are essentially used to find the Jacobian to go from prototypical element space ( ) to actual space (x y z).

Edit: By "2D" modeling, I am referring to 2D elements in 3D space. There are 3D elements as well, but they are not used often in structural analysis.

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