Chapter 1

Plastic Hinges

Note Improved plastic hinging capabilities have been added to Dr. Frame in this release, and the integration into the interface has been completed. This documentation augments and partially supercedes the online information regarding plastic hinging in the original Users Guide.

Dr. Frame provides you with the unique ability to model and observe plastic behavior in structures interactively. This chapter presents Dr. Frames basic plastic hinging functionality, some explanatory and cautionary notes, a set of short tutorial examples, and some verication results. For a rst reading, it may work best to skim the basic operation section and then skip to the examples directly, returning to the more detailed information later.

1.1

Basic Operation

The automatic installation/removal of plastic hinges is the key to modeling plastic behavior in frames using Dr. Frame (Plastic hinges also can be created and manipulated individually in a fashion similar to standard hingessee the online documentation for information concerning working with plastic hinges manually.) The primary set of plastic hinge commands is available via the Plastic Hinges popup in the Modeling menu: 1

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

To install plastic hinges at the ends of all members, use the Install Plastic Hinges command (or type t). (As shown in the examples later, one generally sets up appropriate hinge parameters prior to installing the hinges). To remove plastic hinges, use the Remove Plastic Hinges command (or type T (i.e., shift-t)). This in effect will repair the given structure. To reset the plastic hinges, use the Reset Plastic Hinges command (type P (shift-P)). This operation generally makes sense only if the loads have been backed off below yield values. Automatic plastic hinges will become activated when the moment acting at the hinges location exceeds M p ZFy , in which Z and F y are taken from the property settings for each member in effect at the time the hinges were installed. If you change member properties, be sure to reset the hinges using a T/t uninstall/install sequence.

Plastic hinges display themselves as blue rectangles prior to yielding. Following yielding, they display themselves as either solid red circles during loading or open red circles during unloading. Labels can be attached to plastic hinges to obtain a readout of the current plastic rotation at the hinge. Use the Label Tool to click on the hinge in question, and the label will be created automatically. Use the Units and Number Formatting menu commands and dialogs to choose suitable label output. (Eventually such labels will be able to store a sequence of values for purposes of plotting). Note Labels attached to a plastic hinge will not become visible until the hinge yields.

1.2. NOTES AND CAVEATS

Figure 1.1: Plastic Hinge dialog box. Double-clicking on an active/visible plastic hinge brings up the dialog shown in Figure 1, which can be used to modify the hinges settings. Note that the post yield stiffness is expressed as a multiple of the rotational stiffness of a hypothetical beam segment with a length equal to the beams depth ( EI=d). A value of 0.002 for this parameter is a good starting value for steel members, combined with a hinge offset of one member depth.

For purposes of setting default properties that all hinges will share, an alternate version of the Plastic Hinge Dialog can be brought up using the Plastic Hinge Parameters... command. This version of the dialog will let you set hinge location offsets as a fraction of member depth, and you can specify a shared strain hardening coefcient.

1.2

Notes and Caveats

Dr. Frame makes doing plastic analysis convenient, but there is no magic involved. The following subsections explain how Dr. Frame does its plastic analysis, and what it can and cannot do.

1.2.1 How it Works

Like virtually all nonlinear analysis programs, Dr. Frame exploits the fact that any nonlinear analysis can be treated as a sequence of approximately linear solutions. In fact, for the case of a structure with discrete, bilinear (or trilinear, or multi-linear) yield

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

mechanisms and otherwise linear response, the behavior can be treated as exactly piecewise linear. In such cases, there is no need to control loading increment size beyond capturing accurately the transition from one linear state to the next. In the present context, these transitions correspond to the formation of plastic hinges. To model hinge formation and the subsequent yielded response of a plastic hinge, Dr. Frame uses plastic hinge objects (class in object-oriented programming parlance). Each plastic hinge does the following: Knows which member it belongs to, and where it is located on that member. Knows what moment is necessary to cause itself to yield (or what combination of moment and axial force will cause yield). Installs itelf as a regular hinge combined with applied moments when active and loading. Keeps track of accumulated plastic rotation,
p

, while yielding.

Keeps track of the previously applied moment at its location. This enables the plastic hinge to determine moment increments from one load step to the next. Watches each increment of rotation to detect unloading. When unloading, installs itself as a locked up (rigidly constrained) hinge with an imposed rotation jump. The corresponding constraint equation is of the form left right p .

These capabilities allow the plastic hinge objects to independently manage themselves, and to take responsibility for most the details of the inelastic analysis. The accurate determination of yield transitions requires communication between the plastic hinge objects and the objects responsible for interpreting and applying user actions. In particular, following each user action such as incrementing a load or set of loads, or imposing a displacement, each plastic hinge checks to see if its yield capacity has been exceeded. If so, it then reports to the action-controlling object the amount by which its capacity was exceeded as a fraction of the action itself. The action controller then backs off the action by the necessary percentage, which results in an applied increment just causing the given plastic hinge to reach its yield transition. The gure below illustrates how this works:

1.2. NOTES AND CAVEATS

Mi +1 Mp Mi P P' P

. .

.
P i Pp P+1 i

The plot shows the variation in moment at a particular hinge location as a function of the applied load, P . As the applied load increments from P i to Pi+1 , the moment increments from Mi to Mi+1 . For the case shown, this load increment causes the moment to exceed the plastic moment, M p . Since the relation between applied moment and applied load is linear, it is straightforward to compute the percentage of the increment, P , that should have been applied such that the moment would fall right at the transition moment, M p . In particular, we have

M = M +1; M ;M
p i i

With multiple hinges, it is necessary that each hinge check its moment following each action/increment, and the minimum P 0 overall controls the increment used. Note that this approach does not depend inherently on small increments. There are various circumstances that can cause a nonlinear relation to exist between moment and user action. Moving loads, changing geometry, etc., will lead to nonlinear moment changes, in general. Including geometric nonlinearities will also result in a deviation from the linear plot above. When the relation between moment and user action is nonlinear, then it is necessary that one use relatively small increments.

1.2.2 Limitations
Plasticity brings with it a great deal of inherent complexity, and you can very easily perform actions that will get Dr. Frame in an invalid or confused state. The main issue is the fact that, unlike most geometric nonlinearities, plasticity introduces history dependence to a structure, and unlike a real structure, a computational model operates in a context of discrete time. Any overly large discrete change in the structural model is likely to lead to a bogus state. In general, then, work with small incrementing actions, and if you need to make some large alterations to a structure, uninstall the plastic hinges, back off the loads, make your changes, and then begin your analysis anew.

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

Beyond issues associated with plastic analysis in general, there is the further issue of the ever imperfect nature of software. As mentioned above, this version of Dr. Frame has several features/capabilities that are still in the works. Here are the known issues, bugs, and missing features to date (send e-mail to support@drsoftware-home.com to report other problems or suggestions): Automatic hinge formation currently works only for end-of-span hinges. In-span hinges need to be applied manually (i.e., by control-clicking with the plastic hinge tool). When 2nd-order analysis is enabled, the stability meter gives meaningless values once the rst plastic hinge has formed. When including geometric effects (i.e., 2nd-order analysis is enabled), it is best to hold off installing the plastic hinges until the structure has been loaded up near yield. Before installing the hinges, use the i key to ensure the geometrically nonlinear solution is fully converged. The current plastic hinge yield criterion uses a very simple linear interaction relation to account for axial load effect. The relation is of the form

P Py

M Mp

=1

in which is chosen acording to the level of axial load, as outlined in the AISC LRFD specication. Once a sufcient number of hinges have formed to cause a collapse, the structure can not be restored by backing off the loads. This is actually realistic, but is different from the programs behavior following instability due to geometric effects alone. To get back to a good state, heal the structure by uninstalling the plastic hinges (T). There have been a few changes in the program since the time the gures in this document were madeyou may notice a few minor mismatches between what you see and what the gures depict. The undo and redo commands have not been tested much yet with automatic plastic hinges, so these commands might cause crashing problems. Always remember the golden rule of working with computers: Save early. Save often.

1.3. EXAMPLES

1.3

Examples

The examples in this section illustrate the basics of doing plastic analysis. The best way to go through the examples is to carry out the various steps yourself using Dr. Frame. Example 1 The gure below shows a propped cantilever that we will use to consider the behavior of simple plastic hinging.

0 k'

This conguration can be set up using the following sequence of operations: 1. Open a new le using the File:New command. 2. Use Modeling:Auto Beam... command to set up a simple beam conguration. Use the default properties in the dialog. 3. Use the xed support tool to change the left support by clicking on the existing pin support. (If you are not sure which tool is which, refer to the online Users Guide. Also, in addition to the standard pop-up tool tips on the Windows platform, a brief help message appears in the status pane when the cursor rolls over each tool button) Now that geometry and support conditions have been set up, the next task is to assign member properties and install the plastic hinges. For this example, the only member property we will change is the plastic section modulus. 1. Use the select (arrow) tool to double-click on the beam. 2. Enter a new value in the Section Modulus edit box. Use results presented here.

15in 3 to match the

3. Close the dialog. 4. Type t to install plastic hinges. Small blue rectangles will appear at the ends of the beam. For this example, we will apply the load via an imposed displacement at the right support.

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

1. Turn on displacement display by typing u (typing u again will toggle the displacement display back off) 2. Choose the select tool, hold down the control-key, and click and slowly drag the right support down. If necessary, drag a bit to the right as well to keep the support at the end of the beam. 3. Release the mouse button and use the displacement display scaling button to reduce the displacement scale. This will allow you to get higher moments without the beam displacement diagram overlapping the moment diagram. 4. Control-click and drag the right support down again, and this time continue dragging until the maximum moment reaches 45 k-ft and a plastic hinge forms. 5. Continue to control-drag the right support downward, and note that the moment remains constant at the left support. 6. Control-drag the right support slowly up, and note how the hinge display changes to an open circle and the left support moment begins changing again. 7. Continue dragging the support up until the hinge yields again the other way. 8. Return the right support to the original location by selecting it and typing 0 (zero), and note the residual moment and displacement. 9. Choose the label tool and click on the plastic hinge (be sure to click on the hinge outline, or you will end up selecting the joint beneath the displayed hinge). The label will indicate the plastic rotation across the hinge. 10. Return to the select tool and control-drag the right support through several reversed yielding cycles, noting the accumulation of plastic rotation as reected in the label readout. 11. Type the T key to remove the plastic hinge and erase the effects of the yielding history. 12. Back the support displacement off, if necessary, until the moment at the left support drops below 45 k-ft. Type t to reinstall hinges, and you can start a fresh elastic-plastic analysis. Exercise a Attach a label to the right support so that you can read out the actual displacement you are imposing. Record moment and displacement values as you do some cyclic plastic loading. Plot moment versus displacement. Exercise b Repeat Exercise a, except before installing the plastic hinges, use the Modeling:Plastic Hinges:Plastic Hinge Parameters... command to bring up the plastic hinge info dialog. Use this dialog to set the post-yield

1.3. EXAMPLES

stiffness to a non-zero value. Close the dialog, install the hinges, and do the cyclic loading, recording values as before. Plot the nal results.

2
Example 2 The gure below shows a simple frame with a vertical and a horizontal load applied at the column-beam joint.

210.0 k 5.5 k

41 k'

To build this model yourself, do the following: 1. Starting with a new window, use the menu command Auto Frame... to bring up the Auto Frame dialog. Set the number of bays to 1 and the bay width to 15 ft, and then hit the OK button to close the dialog. 2. Use the arrow tool to drag a selection rectangle around the right column, joints and support, and then use the delete key to remove these items. 3. Use the roller support tool to install a roller support on the beam similar to the previous example: click somewhere in the beams span, and then drag the support to the right end of the beam. 4. Since we will be applying loads with very different magnitudes, type the period key, ., to set xed arrow lengths for the display of force values. (This is a toggle: once you have applied your loads, you can type . again to have the forces drawn to scale if you are curious.) 5. Use the point load tool to apply the vertical load. There are several ways to accomplish this. You can click somewhere in the beams span and drag the

10

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

load to the beams end, and then pull down to increase the loads magnitude, or you can double-click in the beams span and set the load parameters directly using the ensuing dialog. If you click on the joint rather than one of the members, you will get a joint load, which behaves a bit differently when you drag it. For this problem it is easier to use member loads, so if you made a joint load, select it, type delete to remove it, and then apply another load starting with a click in the beams span. 6. Apply the horizontal load similarly by clicking in the columns span and setting the loads magnitude and location appropriately using either the mouse (click and drag) or the dialog (double-click and edit parameters). 7. Use the arrow tool to drag a selection box around the entire structure (not including the moment diagram). Choose Object Info... (ctrl-i/cmd-i) from the Info menu, and use the member properties dialog to set the beam and 3 as in the previous example. column section modulus to

15 in

8. Save this structure using the Save... command in the File menu. Now that the structure has been set up, we will do some plastic modeling. We will rst do a purely piecewise linear analysis by ignoring bending-axial interaction. 1. Make sure the horizontal loads magnitude is such that the maximum moment displayed is less than 45 k-ft, and then install/enable plastic hinges for each member by typing t. 2. Turn on displacement display by typing u. 3. Use the arrow tool to select the horizontal load (i.e., click on it), and then use the cursor keys to increment the load. In particular, the up and down arrows will change the magnitude of the load: in this case the down arrow will increase the load (This load is pointing down relative to the members orientation). 4. By default the load will increment by 5 times the current force display resolution, i.e., by 0.5 k when force values are displayed to one decimal place. Holding down the control key while using the cursor keys will make the increment match the display resolution, i.e. 0.1 kips in this case. Holding down the shift key results in load increments 10 times the display resolution. For this particular problem, holding down the control key will give a good viewing increment. Note The value display resolution can be modied for any set of quantities via the Options:Number Formatting... menu command. This makes it possible to achieve very small increments when desired.

1.3. EXAMPLES

11

5. Continue increasing the load until the rst plastic hinge forms. You may note that there is an apparent hesitation in the load increase just before the hinge forms. This is due to the plastic hinge overriding the applied increment as described in the previous section. 6. Continue loading until the second and nal hinge forms. At this point the structure becomes unstable, and the display will reect this fact. Like a real structure, backing off the load at this point does no goodyou are stuck in an unstable state. To restore the structure, type T (shift-t) to invoke the Remove Plastic Hinges command. 7. Use the cursor key to back off the load until the maximum moment again drops below 45 k-ft. Re-initialize the plastic hinges by typing t. 8. Reload the structure up past the point of the rst hinge forming, but short of the second hinge forming. Use the cursor key to unload the structure, taking the horizontal load magnitude all the way to zero. This shows the residual moment and displacement arising from the plastic deformation. 9. Increment the load back up a bit, and then heal the structure by typing T. We will now analyze the structure again, but this time we will account for the moment-axial force interaction in terms of moment amplication. 1. Deselect the Resistance Factors On option in the Modeling menu. 2. Select the 2nd Order Analysis option in the Modeling menu. (You can just use the comma (,) key to quickly toggle this option on and off). This will cause a stability meter to appear as part of the display, and you will note an amplication in the moment and displaced shape of the frame. 3. Toggle 2nd-order analysis off and on with the comma key to provide a quick assessment of the relative importance of geometric effects. 4. With 2nd-order analysis turned on, look carefully at the value of the stability meter, and type the i key. This key causes the nth order step command in the Modeling menu to be invoked, which results in a further iteration beyond the basic 2nd-order analysis. This particular frame is relatively sensitive to geometric effects, so it takes several iterations to fully converge. Note that the moment and displacement are not inuenced much by the additional iterations in this case, however. 5. Adjust the magnitude of the horizontal load such that the maximum moment is less than 45 k-ft with the 2nd order effects included. 6. Use the i key to get a fully converged solution. This is an important step when doing plastic analysis including geometric effectssubsequent solu-

12

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

tions will all be based on the starting state at which the plastic hinges were installed. 7. Type t to install the plastic hinges. 8. Select the horizontal load and increment as before. Note It is more important that you use the control key in combination with the cursor keys to keep the increments small in this case, since the problem is no longer truly piecewise linear. One side effect of this nonlinearity is that you may think the program has stopped incrementing when plastic hinges are about to form keep hitting the cursor key: the hinge will eventually form. Look at the gure in the previous section illustrating how load increments are determined in the vicinity of plastic hinge formation, and consider what happens if the moment-load relation is nonlinear with increasing or decreasing slope. This will help you understand what causes the apparent temporary freezing due to very small increments being taken. 9. Load up to the formation of the second hinge, and the structure will become unstable again. To restart the analysis do the following: (a) Type shift-t to heal the plastic hinges and resurrect the frame. (b) Back off the load to bring the moments below yield. (c) Use the i key to get a converged solution. (d) Install new hinges by typing t.

2
Example 3 This example considers a somewhat larger frame with more complex loading. Nevertheless, the only real difference between this and the previous examples is the illustration of handling multiple loads. We start by constructing the frame shown below:

1.3. EXAMPLES

13

0.50 k/ft 5.0 k

0.50 k/ft 3.5 k

0.50 k/ft 2.0 k

39 k'

1. In a new window, choose the Auto Frame command from the Modeling menu. Set the number of stories to 3 and the number of bays to 2, and hit the OK button. 2. Use the arrow tool to drag a selection box around the entire structure, and choose Object Info... from the Info menu. Set the section modulus to 3 , and click OK.

20 in

3. This time we will give the hinges an offset from the joints. Therefore, invoke the Plastic Hinge Parameters... command to get the appropriate dialog, and enter the value of 1.0 in the location box. Click OK to close the dialog. 4. Type t to install member-end plastic hinges, and control-click with the hinge tool to add in-span plastic hinges to the beams, if desired. 5. Use the distributed load tool and shift-click on each story. Holding down the shift key causes the newly applied load to extend across all bays for a given story. 6. Use the point load tool to apply horizontal point loads at each story level. As before, it is best to apply the loads in the column spans, and then slide them to the joints. (You may need to resize the window a bit and use the panner tool to move things around so you can see the load magnitudes.) 7. Use the arrow tool and shift click on each load until all the loads are selected. 8. Use the Group command in the Edit menu to group the selected loads. Deselect the loads by clicking in a blank part of the window, and then click on one of the point loads. Note that all the grouped loads are selected.

14

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

Note Although all loads are selected, the load that was actually clicked on will be used to dene the load increments. All else being equal, point loads provide more sensitivity than distributed loads, so when point loads are available, use them to select the group. 9. Use the cursor keys as before to increment the loads (its not a bad idea to use the control key to keep the increment size moderate). All the loads are incremented together using proportional loading, with the increment amount dened by the load that was used to select the group. 10. Continue increasing the loads and observe the various plastic hinges appearing in sequence. Remember that this is a load-controlled test, so once a sufcient number of hinges form to create a mechanism, the structure will be come unstable, and backing off the load wont x it.

2
1.4 Verication

This section presents comparisons between published results for nonlinear frames and analyses performed with Dr. Frame. The two comparisons presented here include one experimental study and one analytical study. More extensive comparisons (which we have already done) and detailed descriptions of analysis parameters and procedures will be included in a future version of this documentation. The test les themselves will also be available from our web site at a future date. Note that the process of generating these results uses the same procedures outlined in the previous Examples section.

1.4.1 Hybrid Frame

An experiment has been performed by Arnold et al., to investigate the inelastic behavior of a simple frame (Peter Arnold and Peter F. Adams and Le-Wu Lu, Strength and Behavior of an Inelastic Hybrid Frame, ASCE Journal of the Structural Division, 94(ST1), 1968). This is a well known test, for which interesting behavioral phenomena were found. The displacement based test yielded results that are useful for calibrating various plastic analyses. Signicant gravity and horizontal loads were applied to the frame, which caused yielding inuenced by geometric effects. During the test, the frame was successfully restricted to in-plane movement for the rst load cycle, which allows for 2D analysis. The gure below shows the conguration as represented by Dr. Frame during an analysis:

1.4. VERIFICATION
60.00 k 5.53 in 20.00 k 10I25.4, Ixx 20.00 k 18.12 k 60.00 k

15

5WF18.5, Ixx

5WF18.5, Ixx

676 in-k 116 %

689 in-k

72.67 k Stability Ratio (EI = EI(P), phi's off): 3.76407e+95

The gure below presents a load-displacement comparison for Dr. Frame and the experimental data:

18 16 14 12 10 8 6

Experiment
4 2 0 0 2 4 6 8

Dr. Frame

(in)

Overall the match between the experiment and analysis is good (and comparable to other published analyses of the same experiment).

16

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

1.4.2 Vogel Frame

The ECCS (European Convention for Constructional Steelwork) has published the results of a six-story, two bay, plastic zone frame analysis. (See U. Vogel, Calibration Frames, Stahlbau, 54(10), 1985, and U. Vogel, et al., Ultimate Limit State Calculation of Sway Frames with Rigid Joints, ECCS-CECM-EKS Publication, No. 33, 1984) The data have become a widely accepted benchmark used to calibrate structural analysis programs with plastic hinging. The gure below shows load-displacement curves from the above-referenced publications and Dr. Frame.

1.6 1.4 1.2 1 0.8 0.6 0.4

Vogel

0.2 0 0 4 8 12 16

Dr. Frame

20

24

Lateral Defl (cm)

Top story

Another comparison between these two analyses is shown in the gures below, which illustrate the plastic hinging locations for the two analyses.

1.4. VERIFICATION

17

18
36.25 kN/m 11.70 kN 36.25 kN/m

CHAPTER 1. PLASTIC HINGES

56.15 kN/m 23.37 kN

56.15 kN/m

56.15 kN/m 23.37 kN

56.15 kN/m 23.37 kN

56.15 kN/m 23.37 kN

56.15 kN/m 23.37 kN

It should be noted that the Vogel analysis was based on a plastic zone approach, which is a more involved and more accurate modeling technique than the discrete-hinge approach currently built in to Dr. Frame. Nevertheless, these results indicate that one can generate quite accurate results using Dr. Frame.