Create Events with Fixed Points

Forego adding loads and create events that use a fixed number of time points.

  1. From the Setup tools, click the Load Map tool.


    Figure 1.
    The Load Map dialog opens.
  2. Select Fixed Points from the Load Type drop-down menu in the top-left of the dialog.
    Note: Plots or channels are not required.
  3. Click in the bottom half of the dialog to create events.
  4. Drag-and-drop subcases onto the events.
  5. Optional: Edit the scale values for the loads.
  6. Adjust the number of cycles per event by changing the Repeats value.
    For all specifications, repeats are considered as the required number of cycles (Nreq).
    Tip: Apply a Scale or Repeats value to all the events/subcases by right-clicking on a value and selecting Apply value to all events.
  • Subcases placed under each fixed points event are compared to pick a max and min point which will constitute the fixed stress range.
  • For the Eurocode 3 specification, multiple events created are passed as separate ranges to create cumulative damage.

    Cumulative Damage = Damage from Event 1 + damage from Event 2 + … damage from Event n.

Import and Export Range Definition Files

Range definition files (*.rdf) help create fixed range events automatically.

Note: Range definition files only work in combination with load combination files (LCF).

The LCF is used to create the derived loadcases, which are then used to define fixed ranges via the RDF.

  1. From the Setup tools, click the Load Map tool.


    Figure 2.
    The Load Map dialog opens.
  2. Select Fixed Points from the Load Type drop-down menu in the top-left of the dialog.
  3. Use the and icons on the bottom-half of the dialog to import or export an *.rdf file containing defined events.
The *.rdf file contains the detail of the fatigue loadcase limit data (upper and lower limit loadcase data). The range definition file starts with the line #PARAM and should contain the following data in the sequence mentioned below:
  1. A #RANGES tag to indicate the start of the definition of the ranges.
  2. Range detail with the id, lower limit, upper limit, and the range name, as shown in the example below.


Figure 3. Example Range Definition File