Modeling strut with connectors

[jball1]

Apologize for the really basic question. I am modeling a strut acting between two points that has different releases on each end (fixed on one end, one moment released on the other). Do I need three connectors to represent the strut? One each to represent the releases on each end, and then a second to represent the axial and rotational stiffnesses of the strut member itself? Or is there a way to do this with a single connector? Thank you.

 

[FEA way]

Do you have to use connectors for this ? With beam elements you could use the *RELEASE keyword to define end release.

 

[jball1]

Thanks. Yeah, that would work. The truth is I want to start using connectors more frequently in my models, and so I saw this as a possible opportunity to do so. Connectors have a lot of capabilities that I'm not very familiar with. But I don't really need them in this instance.

I guess one reason why I'd like to use them here is that I wanted to explore the failure capabilities of connectors on this job. The particular item and loading case that I am modeling is likely going to result in catastrophic failure, and I think that the failure capability of connectors would allow me to fairly easily capture this in an animation which I think the customer would appreciate. But it's certainly not necessary.