Defining a truss section

A truss section definition requires only a material reference and the cross-sectional area. Remember that the frame members are circular bars that are 0.025 m in diameter. Thus, their cross-sectional area is 49.0874 × 10−5 m2.

Context:

Tip: You can use the command line interface (CLI) in Abaqus/CAE as a simple calculator. For example, to compute the cross-sectional area of the frame members, click the tab in the bottom left corner of the Abaqus/CAE window to activate the CLI, type pi*0.025**2/4.0 after the command prompt, and press Enter . The value of the cross-sectional area is printed in the CLI.

  1. In the Model Tree, double-click the Sections container to create a section.

    The Create Section dialog box appears.

  2. In the Create Section dialog box:
    1. Name the section FrameSection.
    2. In the Category list, select Beam.
    3. In the Type list, select Truss.
    4. Click Continue.

    The Edit Section dialog box appears.

  3. In the Edit Section dialog box:
    1. Accept the default selection of Steel for the Material associated with the section. If you had defined other materials, you could click the arrow next to the Material text box to see a list of available materials and to select the material of your choice.
    2. In the Cross-sectional area field, enter pi*0.025**2/4.0.

      Tip: If a field in a dialog box is expecting a floating point number, you can enter an arithmetic expression instead. The expression is evaluated by the Python interpreter that is built into Abaqus/CAE. The arithmetic expression will be replaced by its value.

    3. Click OK.