How to impose displacement in multiple load steps in Static Analysis?

[bunalmatriseb]

I am working on a column model verification. The column I have modeled is a cantilever RC column from an experiment. I have the experiment results in “force-tip displacement” format (around 2000 data pairs).


I have been trying to find a good way to apply displacement to the tip of the column in multiple load steps, so that, I can compare force-displacement results with the experiment. I can think of two alternative solutions:

1) Static pushover analysis for each displacement step: I set the maximum displacement as the displacements in the force-displacement pairs. Divided each analysis to 10 steps. However, I could not decide how to select the lateral load for the pushover.


2) Treat the problem as a support settlement problem and use sp command inside load pattern. However, I could not implement this solution, as I am not sure how to use pattern and sp commands together.


Do you think is there a better way of obtaining displacement-force graph for a given displacement set? If you have any other suggestions, please let me know.

[mhscott]

I think option 2 is best if you know the displacement history.