Analysis Result Extraction Functions

All results available through the OpenBrIM app are also accessible in ParamML documents through result extraction functions. That means results can be used just like any other parameter in your ParamML document. Keep in mind that if there are not analysis results available (results have been reset or analysis have not yet been run), these parameters will evaluate to zero.

Negative/Positive Effects

Certain analysis cases provide results separately for negative and positive displacements/forces. For example, influence based live load analysis cases provide results that maximizes negative moment and/or positive moment on a beam. Or an enveloped case that is setup to pick the maximum separately for negative and positive force effects.

If such analysis case is provided to the aforementioned functions, the returned result may be for negative or positive depending on which one is larger in magnitude. Internally, OpenBrIM fetches the results for both positive and negative and then picks the absolute maximum.

Composite Forces

Instead of getting forces on a particular finite element, in certain cases, you may be interested in getting sum of forces of multiple elements. OpenBrIM calls these composite forces. Given a set of finite elements, composite force procedure computes a geometric centroid formed by the elements and then transform the forces in the elements to this centroid, sum and report as composite force.

One common use case for composite forces is to get composite forces acting on a girder where the girder and the deck is modeled using separate finite elements. In such case, rather than the forces in the individual finite elements, you would be interested in composite forces formed by the elements of the girder and the contributing deck over the girder.

Extracting Displacement

Extracting Force

Extracting Stress