Steel bars in the beams

[Polatoglou]

Hi! I would like to ask sth about the steel bars on opensees. Can I put different steel bars in the center point and in the side points of a beam? Generally different amount of steel bars is needed in the centre and in the sides of a beam because of their different moments. In addition, is it better to put symmentrical steel bars in the columns and in the beams?

[vesna]

Yes, you can do it. Use a "layer" command for each group of bars. You will have something like this:

section Fiber $secTag {
layer straight $matTag1 $numFiber1 $areaFiber1 $yStart1 $zStart1 $yEnd1 $zEnd1
layer straight $matTag2 $numFiber2 $areaFiber2 $yStart2 $zStart2 $yEnd2 $zEnd2
....
}