Modelling Concrete Tower in SAP2000

[stillife]

Hi all,

I've been using SAP2000 for frame analysis at school for a while. But for a new project I'm not sure if simplifying the structure to frames would be the best course of action. What I have is a cable-stayed bridge with a concrete tower that has a very unusual geometry (I have attached a picture). I have modeled the tower in 3D in Sketchup, but I'm not sure what is the best way of modelling it in SAP2000.

Here is what I have thought of so far:
- Use a single cantilevered beam element with varying cross-section. This might allow me to use the concrete design feature but I'm not sure how to find the force distribution at the base of the tower for foundation design.
- Use a series of beam elements, like a truss to model the 3D structure of the tower. This might work but I'm not sure how to convert the concrete structure to equivalent truss.
- Use a solid model of the tower with base springs. This would give me base stress distribution as well as stress distribution throughout the tower, but I'm having problems bringing my 3D dxf model into SAP as a solid object

If anyone has any guidance about this, I would really appreciate it.

Thanks,
Jon

 

[stillife]

Hi all,

I've managed to create a 3D solid model of the concrete tower I had talked about above. I am now wondering how I can bring this into SAP2000. I haven't dealt with solid models in SAP. It seems like the 3D solid from autocad dxf file can't be brought in as is. It seems like a solid mesh must be created. I'm not sure how that could be done based on this geometry. I've attached the dxf if anyone is interested in looking at it.

Any help is greatly appreciated.
Jon

 

[zstone]

I think that simply import of DXF Solid model of Auto CAD into SAP 2000, is "let i say imposible,
Sap can import solid models coresponding to polygonal mesh into Auto Cad,

Simply you can try. Create solid oject template into SAp 2000, and export as DXf file, and go to Auto cad and open it.
Lok up for the properties of Exported solids, you will see dhat are polygonal mesh.
Into auto cad to create your project as polygonal mesh, is very difficult and time consuming.

I propose to try to use ACIS Geometrical cernel.(*.sat) format but im not sure that thes files are suported from SAP 2000.


From some other programs is possible