Topic: doubt about principal strain and principal stress at reinforcement

I am post-doctoral reserchear at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign and I am making numeric simulations on corbels using the Atena 2D version 3 that is not compatible with windows vista, but i am using windows XP. I would like to know if is possible to capture by file the principal strains or principal stress at a specific point of the reinforcement for each load step, i.e., capture the load-strain or stress curve for a given location of the reinforcement. I only saw these informations by the graphs. So I have to see each load step, note down the value, and sometimes, the value that I want to pick is not described, I should see through the scale, and this is not a practical way to capture the values. I would like to know if there is a more automatic way to do this. I hope you can answer my question as soon as possible, because I really need to continue my research.
Thanks by the attention,
Rejane Canha.

Re: doubt about principal strain and principal stress at reinforcement

Please avoid cross-posting. The answer sent by email at 17:15 MET:

I am afraid there is no direct way of monitoring reinforcement strains and stresses in ATENA 2D. It is possible to monitor reinf. stress and strains in ATENA 3D or AtenaWin.

In the 1D reinforcement elements, the principal strain/stress is simply equal to the X-direction strain(Exx)/stress(Sxx).

From ATENA 2D, I can recommend exporting the strain/stress results as text (file-text printout) for all steps (you have check the corresponding boxes for each step). Then, you may filter out all unneeded lines, e.g., import the file into a spreadsheet program, add the step number to each line, sort according to the column with node number, delete all lines above and below the node you are interested in,  sort by the column with step number.

Re: doubt about principal strain and principal stress at reinforcement

Sorry, but I didn't see which option i should check for the strain/stress at the reinforcement in the text printout. I already used this for plot the results of the monitoring points. I know the text printout and how to transport the data from this for a spreadsheet, but I don't know which box is regarding the reinforcement. Could you say for me, please?
Thanks again.

Re: doubt about principal strain and principal stress at reinforcement

And i have ohter question. If is possible to capture the strains/stress at reinforcement by the text-printout file, and if it is by the box node, how do I know which node regarding the number node showed I am picking up the strain/stress? Thanks again.

Re: doubt about principal strain and principal stress at reinforcement

In the text printout of ATENA 2D, there are values for all nodes, regardless if they belong to volume elements or reinforcement.
As a hint, note that reinforcement only has X stresses and strains, and zeros in the other directions (however, this may also happen in some volume-element node, according to the boundary conditions).

Regarding which node is which:
Enable the "Label nodes" checkbox on the "Finite element mesh" tab in the Options-Drawing settings dialogue.
Or you may enable the REFERENCE_NODAL_COORDINATES output and you can identify the reinf. nodes by their coordinates.