Viewing plastic hinges

[davidli506]

Hello All,

I have created a nine-story steel frame structure with nonlinear concentrated plasticity elements. The elements form plastic hinges at the ends once yielding has been reached with the help of zero-length elements. I followed the "MRF_2Story_Concentrated" example created by Sylvia to build this model.

My question is if there is a way to show the order of which plastic hinge has formed or which plastic hinge even developed during a time history analysis. I know how to record the moment and rotation of each zero-length element, but is there a way that I do not need to record each individual zero-length element and go through the data. I have created about 190-200 zero-length elements in the OpenSees model; therefore, it is very tedious for me to record and go through each individual plastic hinge element.

Thank you,
David

[vesna]

Unfortunately, there is no OpenSees command that will give you the information about the order of formation of plastic hinges and their developed during a time history analysis.

[davidli506]

vesna wrote:
> Unfortunately, there is no OpenSees command that will give you the
> information about the order of formation of plastic hinges and their
> developed during a time history analysis.


Dear Vesna,

My professor is insistent that OpenSees should have some kind of function that does what I had described earlier. Let me confirm that there is no possible way of identifying plastic hinge formation in any type of analysis. There is a method to record the moment and rotation of each individual plastic hinge element, but that is just for the specified elements that are recorded. There is no universal output to identify the plastic hinges formed at the end of an analysis.

Thank you,
David

[vesna]

Yes, you are right.