Beam elements

In Strand7, beam is the generic term for a series of line elements and includes the following types:

Standard beams include axial, bending and torsional stiffness. These also support nonlinear axial stress/strain behaviour and nonlinear moment/curvature behaviour.
Truss elements are used as tension/compression members. These also support nonlinear stress/strain behaviour.
Cutoff bars are used as truss elements, where the axial force must remain within specified limits. These facilitate the modelling of tension-only or compression-only members.
Point contacts are used for node-to-node contact nonlinearity and may include friction.
Springs and dampers model a spring in parallel with a discrete damper.
Cable elements based on the catenary formulation. These may have a free length that is different from the distance between the end nodes.
Connection elements allow you to specify elastic or plastic connections between nodes.
User-defined beams allow advanced users to specify the element's behaviour by entering a stiffness matrix directly.