Civil Engineering Association

I have a model with compression only frames in SAP2000 v14. When there are many nonlinear elements, the time needed for calculation the model exceedes several hours. Last time it took 3h45min to calculate a model with 50 loading steps (1 static nonlinear case).
The most funny thing is that in the manual it is said that SAP2000 has a "very fast" nonlinear solver.
Reducing the steps doesn't help much.

There are some nonlinear parameters to setup, but I do not fully understand their meaning. I do not want to reduce significantly the amount of the loading steps. I have tried to reduce the number of iterations, but the null steps becomes more than the successful steps and as a result it saves only 1 or 2 steps out of 100.

The same model in MIDAS GEN is calculated for max 10min, but I have a feeling that the results are not quite right and I want to compare the results.

Is there a way to reduce the calculation time somehow?

In Sap2000 goto Analyze-->set analysis options-->solver option
and then if you have a multi core computer then select the multi threaded solver.

The draw back is that the multi threaded solver is in the development stage and it will not give you any error info.

Hi, everyone.
Particularly, I recommend you don't use features which you don't fully understand.
Nonlinear analysis is a quite complicated. Especially, considering the mathematical background involved in the problem.
The most important thing is being clear when using a particular tool, such as nonlinear material behaviour or large displacements.
Look for the Prof. Wilson's (Among others) books in order to get further information about the topic you need.
Best regards,