Category Archives: Finite Element Analysis

Dancing Pendulums

This animation was produced in response to a video of real pendulums performing similar tricks: Not having an animation program I thought I’d use the finite element program Strand7.  Modelling the pendulums was easy, just 15 beam elements with a … Continue reading

Posted in Animation, Excel, Finite Element Analysis, Newton | Tagged , , , | 5 Comments

Working with FEM data and using the dictionary object

This post features an Excel User Defined Function (UDF) to count the number of different element types (beams, plates, bricks and links) and the number of node restraints at each end of listed beams from a finite element model.  The … Continue reading

Posted in Arrays, Excel, Finite Element Analysis, Newton, UDFs, VBA | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Route Map …

… so we know where we are going. I’ll be starting several, to some extent interlinked, new themes in this blog over the coming weeks.  Firstly VBA Classes.  Regular readers may have noticed that my VBA code tends to be … Continue reading

Posted in AlgLib, Concrete, Excel, Finite Element Analysis, Frame Analysis, Link to dll, Maths, Newton, VBA | Tagged , , , , , | 4 Comments

Beam on Elastic Foundations Analysis

A previous post on laterally loaded piles used a finite difference analysis to analyse the deflections and forces in a vertical pile subject to a lateral load at the top.  An alternative approach to the same problem is presented in “Programming the Finite … Continue reading

Posted in Excel, Finite Element Analysis, Geotechnical Engineering, Newton, UDFs, VBA | Tagged , , , , | 6 Comments

Frame4.xls – Update2

It was recently pointed out to me that the Frame4 spreadsheet was giving an overflow error with a fairly small analysis.  The problem turned out to be that the analysis did not have any restraint specified in the X direction, … Continue reading

Posted in Excel, Finite Element Analysis, Frame Analysis, Newton, VBA | Tagged , , , | 12 Comments