Evaluation and Follow-up Development of OpenSees–A Finite Element Based Structural Analysis Framework

Numerical simulation technology plays an important role in the discipline of earthquake engineering. This work first investigates a finite-element-based earthquake engineering simulation software package named 'OpenSees', which is developed by the Pacific Earthquake Engineering Research Center(PEER) in USA. With its high extensibility and a source code control mechanism, OpenSees might be an important tool for non-linear dynamic earthquake engineering simulation. In addition, this work makes further development on OpenSees, including a simple 3D post-processing program and networked pseudo-dynamic analysis components.