Page Comparison

The information on this page applies only to SAP2000 and CSiBridge v18versions 18.0.1 and prior, and to SAP2000 v18.0ETABS versions 15.2.1 and prior.

The following enhancement has been implemented for SAP2000 and CSiBridge v18.1.0, and for ETABS v16.0 of both programs.0:

The behavior of fiber PMM hinges has been enhanced to remove double-counting of the elastic flexibility in frame members. The elastic flexibility of the frame section now will be set to zero for a tributary length of the member equal to the hinge length of the fiber hinge, so that all elastic flexibility over that length is represented only by the fibers in the hinge. For bending behavior this works best when the hinge is located at the center of its tributary hinge length (axial behavior is not affected significantly by location). The tributary hinge lengths will be shifted as necessary so that they do not overlap the ends of the member or end offsets, and so that they do not overlap each other in the case of multiple hinges. In some cases this may mean that the hinge is not centered in the tributary hinge length, particularly for hinges at the ends of the member. In this latter case better results will be obtained if the hinges are located a half hinge length from the end. For hinge lengths that exceed the length of the element, adjacent elements will not be adjusted and some double counting of elastic flexibility will remain in the model due to the adjacent elements. For this reason it is not recommended to use object or element discretizations that are smaller than the hinge lengths. When frame hinge overwrites are assigned to automatically subdivide at hinge locations, this discretization will now be limited at fiber hinges to be no smaller than the hinge length, provided that no other specified discretization is applied near the hinge. Overall this enhancement will tend to affect the results for all models that use fiber hinges when compared with previous versions of the software, although the effect will be limited in most models where the hinges do not dominate the model. Affected models will tend to be stiffer. Only fiber PMM hinges are affected by this enhancement. For ETABS, hinges modeled using link elements are not affected as there was (and still is) no double-counting of elastic flexibility in this case.