2.14Spring Supports

Structural supports that can deform are referred to as elastic supports or spring supports. When designating spring supports, the program will add the appropriate stiffness terms, representing the spring stiffness, to the global stiffness matrix directly.

Spring supports can be translational (linear) or rotational. They are defined by inputting their corresponding spring constants related to the active degrees of freedom. kx, ky, and kz denote the translational spring constants in the X, Y, and Z directions, respectively. kRx, kRy, and kRz denote the rotational spring constants about the X, Y, and Z axes, respectively. Truss structures can have translational spring supports only, while frame structures can have both translational and rotational spring supports.