SOLVIA Element Library

The following element types can be used in SOLVIA:

TRUSS element
An axial tension/compression element with 2, 3 or 4 nodes, which can also be used as a cable element. In axisymmetric analysis it can be used as a ring element with 1 node.

PLANE element
A 2-D continuum element with 3-9 variable number of nodes for plane strain, plane stress and axisymmetric analysis. The plane stress element can also be used in 3-D as a curved or flat membrane element.

SOLID element
A 3-D continuum element with 4-27 variable number of nodes.

BEAM element
A 2-node beam element which can be defined with rebars and with the following cross-section options:

• Standard section beam of rectangular, pipe, circular solid, box, I, U or T cross-section;
• General section beam defined by moments of inertia and area properties;
• User section beam where the external and internal section boundaries are decribed using straight and circular line segments and the section properties including shear center location and the warping constant are calculated;
• Resultant section beam defined by moment-curvature and force-displacement curves;
• Integrated section beam with elastic-plastic material and evaluated by numerical integration.

The Standard, General, User and Resultant section beam element have a co-rotational formulation and can be used effectively also in large displacement analysis where the rotations are very large.

ISOBEAM element
An isoparametric beam element with 2, 3 or 4 nodes and with rectangular cross-section. It can be defined with rebars.

PIPE element
An isoparametric pipe element with 2, 3 or 4 nodes and with optional ovalization modes. The centroidal axis can be a straight line or a circular bend. The pipe section can be defined with rebars.

PLATE element
A 3 node triangular plate element of the DKT type (Discrete Kirchhoff Theory).

SHELL element
A flat or curved shell element with 3-32 number of nodes and with variable thickness. The 4-node quadrilateral element and the 16-node cubic element are most often used. Rebar layers oriented in different in-plane directions can be modelled.

SPRING element
A translational or rotational spring connecting 2 nodes. The spring stiffness can be nonlinear by specifying the force-displacement or the moment-rotation curves.

GENERAL element
A general mass/stiffness/damping linear element based on user-defined matrices.

FLUID2 element
A plane or axisymmetric (acoustic) fluid element using 3-9 nodes. The fluid element can be used for static and dynamic fluid-structure interaction analysis.

FLUID3 element
A 3-D (acoustic) fluid element using 4-27 nodes. The fluid element can be used for static and dynamic fluid-structure interaction analysis.

FILM element
The FILM element is nonlinear and is formulated with interpolation of oil film pressure and temperature using the film thickness in the deformed configuration. The oil viscosity is temperature and pressure dependent and the generated heat is transported by in-plane convection and in-plane and out-of-plane conduction. See  Oil Film Applications (PDF).