sap2000 1

[NIYAZJAMAL]

how to connect the soil element and the structural element in sap2000?

 

[bgatto]

You can use spring supports.

 

[johnbridge231]

Just apply restraints to the nodes belonging to the corresponding face of the solid element.

Analysis and Design of arbitrary cross sections
Reinforcement design to all major codes
Moment Curvature analysis

http://www.engissol.com/cross-section-analysis-design.html

 

[stressed]

johnbridge's advice is valid if, and only if you wish to consider that the soil stiffness is infinitely rigid in each direction of the restraint. bgatto's advice is more realistic if you want to consider flexibility of the soil as a boundary condition. Please note that you can assign area and line springs which are compression-only, or based on distributed properties of a defined link. Since there is no "soil element" in SAP2000, are you wanting to model soil using solid elements? Or is modeling soil as a boundary condition adequate for what you need?

 

[NIYAZJAMAL]

Thanks to all... Can i use merge option(with tolerance) for connecting the structure (shell elements) with the soil(solid elements) ?

 

[stressed]

So you are modeling soil as a solid element and wanting to connect it to the structure. Let's say, for example, you have modeled a 4 ft. thick basemat foundation using shell elements. In reality, the soil connects with the bottom face of the basemat, and part of the sides. Since the shell is modeled centerline, in reality, the offset from centerline of shell would be 2 ft. If you wanted to consider this 2 ft. offset, you would model the solid face to be 2 feet away from the shell and then connect the solid to the shell using joint constraints. As a practical matter, however, why not just model the solid soil elements directly connected to shell centerline? I don't understand why you would need to bother with using the merge option if you can directly connect them.

It would be quite easy to directly connect the solids with shells using extrude command to extrude shells into solid elements (soil), but without deleting the shells.