STRUCTURAL POST-PROCESSING

At the conclusion of the Structural Menu, the deflections and element loads are stored in the database. To obtain reports of these results, or any results which can be derived from them, one must enter the Structural Post-Processing Menu. This is accomplished by issuing the command,

     STRPOST.

At this point, the commands discussed in this section become available. When one is finished with Structural Post-Processing, he should issue:

     END_STRPOST

to return to the main menu.

For any of the commands in this menu which produce reports, the selection criteria discussed for the &REP_SELECT command is operative. In fact, each of these report commands has as a subset of options, the options of the &REP_SELECT command. Thus, it is a simple matter to obtain reports for a single element, or for any subset of elements. In particular, for commands which deal with elements (beams, generalized plates, connectors, or restraints) only the following will be selected:

• The class name of the element must match the class selector defined by the last -CLASS option,
• The nodes which form the vertices of the element all must match a node selector defined by the last -NODE option, and
• The element name must match the element selector defined by the last -ELEMENT option.

A similar scheme is used for joints, and will be discussed later. In all cases, only cases which match the last -LOAD selector defined will be considered. A common mistake is to define a selector to limit one report and forget that it will also limit all subsequent reports until the selector is redefined. In most cases, the answer to the question of why did I not get ... is answered by a forgotten selector.

There is a string function

     &STR_POST(ACTION, -OPTION)

which gives information about the results obtained in the STRPOST Menu Here ACTION should be chosen from: E_CHECK, E_FATIGUE, E_LOADS, E_STRESS, J_CHECK, J_FATIGUE, C_CHECK, C_LOADS, C_FOUNDATION, or DURATION, and the only option is

     -INITIALIZE.

MOSES saves a set of data about the "worst" situation encountered for each type of report in the STRPOST Menu. This information is initialized for all sets of data each time the menu is entered, or for a particular set when the -INITIALIZE option is used. The prefix stands for the type of data to be returned: E_ for elements, J_ for joints, and C_ for connectors. The word following the _ is the type of command for which the data will be returned: CHECK for a code check, FATIGUE for CDRs, LOAD for internal loads, and STRESS for stresses.

The ACTION DURATION is different from all of the others. It returns information about the duration data used in computing fatigue. In particular it will return 4 numbers:

• The number of spectra used to define the duration,
• The length of time of the duration in days,
• The length of tow in in feet or meters, and
• The average speed of the tow in feet or meters per second.

The data returned for the other values of ACTION vary in detail, but in general will be:

• The name of the element/joint which was the most severe,
• The value which was most critical,
• The number of things which failed,
• The number of classes resized,
• The load case which produced the worst value, and
• The loads (six numbers) which produced the worst value.

The only ACTION which produces exactly what it says is E_CHECK. The others differ from the above as follows:

• E_CHECK - follows the above exactly,
• E_FATIGUE - has only the first three values,
• E_LOADS - does not have number of classes resized,
• E_STRESS- does not have number of classes resized,
• J_CHECK - has neither the number of classes resized nor the six loads,
• J_FATIGUE - has only the first three values,
• C_CHECK - does not have number of classes resized,
• C_LOADS- does not have number of classes resized,
• C_FOUNDATION- has neither the number of classes resized nor the six loads.