problem using ShellMITC4 elements

[scottswensen]

I have been modeling wood-framed shear walls in OpenSees using elasticBeamColumn elements for the framing and quad elements for the sheathing. So far, my models have been able to run with some success. I am looking to changing these quad sheathing elements to ShellMITC4 elements because I need to go to three dimensions (quad only works in 2d). I want the sheathing elements to be 2d, but I need to be able to orient them not only in the x-y plane but also in the x-z and y-z directions. I don't want to use block2d to build the mesh because I have fasteners in irregular locations and need to specify the location of each sheathing node individually. I have tried simply changing the elements from quad to ShellMITC4 and specifying an ElasticMembranePlateSection. While the analysis will run fine using quad elements, changing to ShellMITC4 will cause it to crash (error: "OpenSees has stopped working"). Any suggestions as to what may be happening? Since there isn't any error message I don't really know where to start troubleshooting. Thanks.

[vesna]

Did you adopt the rest of your code? Domain needs to be changed and the rest of the code accordingly.

[mokiao]

scottswensen wrote:
> I have been modeling wood-framed shear walls in OpenSees using
> elasticBeamColumn elements for the framing and quad elements for the
> sheathing. So far, my models have been able to run with some success. I
> am looking to changing these quad sheathing elements to ShellMITC4 elements
> because I need to go to three dimensions (quad only works in 2d). I want
> the sheathing elements to be 2d, but I need to be able to orient them not
> only in the x-y plane but also in the x-z and y-z directions. I don't want
> to use block2d to build the mesh because I have fasteners in irregular
> locations and need to specify the location of each sheathing node
> individually. I have tried simply changing the elements from quad to
> ShellMITC4 and specifying an ElasticMembranePlateSection. While the
> analysis will run fine using quad elements, changing to ShellMITC4 will
> cause it to crash (error: "OpenSees has stopped working"). Any
> suggestions as to what may be happening? Since there isn't any error
> message I don't really know where to start troubleshooting. Thanks.

Hi, did you use the SAWS material for the sheathing? As far as I know block 2d or shell element all require ndmaterial, but saws is uniaxialmaterial. So I wonder what kind of material did you use for sheathing? And finally did your model work out?
Thank you very much!