Surface Elements/Shear Walls in STAAD

[abusementpark]

Hello there,

I am trying to model a shear wall using surface elements in STAAD. STAAD has command for automatic generation of supports along a side of a surface element.

So, if I have a surface element representing the lowest portion of my wall on the ground level and the leftmost and rightmost nodes along the bottom side of the surface element are 33 and 49, I go into the STAAD editor and type in "33 TO 49 GEN FIXED" and it should automatically generate fixed supports at the nodes the surface element will create along that side in between the primary nodes 33 and 49.

My problem is that there does not seem to be any way to get what these reaction values are. Does anyone know where I should go to get these reactions. All STAAD gives me is the reaction from the two corner nodes (ie 33 & 49) at the ends of that side.

Maybe I am going about this the wrong way. Can anyone with experience modeling shear walls in STAAD tell me what they find to be the most preferable way to model continuous supoprts along the base and how to quantitatively look at these values.

Thanks a lot.

 

[structuresguy]

I am not generally a big fan of modelling shear walls in Staad, at least not if I plan to try to design the shear wall from the output Staad gives me. But when I have done it, I use plate elements, with a 4-sided mesh size of approximately known dimensions, say 1'x1' or 2'x2'. Then I will manually add supports along the base. But I add pinned supports, not fixed. Then to find the total wall shear, just add up the support reactions. I have not used the surface type element much.

 

[abusementpark]

Ok, I guess I will have to try it with plate elements. It just involves a lot more user discretization.