Settlement Analysis of a Masonry Building

[LJC]

Thanks again Valentina! I have embedded the central part of the soil model to a larger soil model, so that my mesh may be finer below the building. However when I embed this block, must the nodes of the geometry line up with one another, as I am having errors for an invalid number of nodes for the element type (stdbrick) and I think this may be the issue.

[ValentinaSB]

• The error you saw for stdbrick was related only to element properties, I reassigned it and it is fine now.

• Your interaction for embed element wasn't correct, see how I have changed it.

Anyway now you need to correct your analysis steps, the error you will see is due to the use of the model subset. Maybe you can divide it into two parts: first, ensure your model is running and then add the complexity with the model subset.
Also notice that you are modeling a huge model in N/mm, it can give you problems. Maybe you can scale it and change to kN/m.

[LJC]

I see you have added a line in the analysis "puts [EleStiffnessOOM]", what does this line of code do in the model?

Also may I ask why increasing the size of the model with N/mm affects the model when the mesh is scaled proprotionally.

Thanks again, this forum has been very helpful in learning to use STKO.

[ValentinaSB]

I see you have added a line in the analysis "puts [EleStiffnessOOM]", what does this line of code do in the model?

I used it to see your order of magnitude (OOM) of min and max stiffnesses in your model to be able to define the penalty stiffness for the embed element that you used to join two non-compatible meshes. You can also remove it.

Screenshot 2023-03-10 093457.jpg (62.51 KiB) Viewed 3150 times

Also may I ask why increasing the size of the model with N/mm affects the model when the mesh is scaled proprotionally.

when you use mm for big models the OOM of the bending stiffness DOFs will be much higher than those of the axial DOFs which can lead to numerical problems while you are using the penalty approach. Also by modeling in N/mm you can't increase tolerance because while your displacement in mm and you would like to use the higher value for the tolerance the rotation is always in radians. Instead by using meters you can use a reasonable value that will be suitable for both meters and radians.

Best,
Valentina

[LJC]

Thank you!

[LJC]

I have redesigned the geometry for the soil model, and now the embed is not fully working. I think theres a chance I might have made the same mistake as before that Valentina fixed, however I'm not exactly sure what the fix was, I have included the embed constraint onto my embed but it does not look like the embed is correctly attatching to the slave nodes. I have redone the selections multiple times but I am still coming up with the same issue, I have attatched the model, and think I might have made an obvious error, or is it simply just visualization glitch.

[LJC]

Here is a screenshot of the embed above when meshed, where only one side is properly interacting

[ValentinaSB]

You are not using selection sets, so I can't check how you assigned your embed. Try to use selection sets for this kind of interaction, in this case, you will always be able to check if you did it correctly. Look at your previous model where I added embed before. I used selection sets that you could trace what I have done.

Screenshot 2023-03-14 090608.jpg (240.44 KiB) Viewed 3090 times

• use the node to element interaction type

• then your master should be solid of your course soil

• and the slave geometry are faces of your fine soil

Try and let me know if you need help.

[LJC]

I have redrawn and reassigned everything for the soil domain embed, however as you can see there are still issues as the corners are not properly connecting, I have created selection sets so you can see what I have used to link the two domains, any help would be much appreciated.

[ValentinaSB]

Did you mean these two sets? They are both solids. For the slave you need faces.

Screenshot 2023-03-15 172826.jpg (165.3 KiB) Viewed 3052 times

Use the hide/show buttons, in this case, you do not need to move your building (just hide it). And use selection buttons, select only faces for the second selection set. Look one more time at my example, choose the selection set that I have created, and use the button show only(the center one) and you will see only faces.

Best,
Valentina