Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Marc Wirth
Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Andreas Walker
Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Jonas Schwarz
Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Thomas S. Lumpe
Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland
Tian Chen
Department of Mechanical Ensgineering, Cullen College of Engineering, University of Houston, 4226 Martin Luther King Boulevard, Houston, TX, USA
Tino Stanković
Engineering Design and Computing Laboratory, Department of Mechanical and Process Engineering, ETH Zurich, Tannenstrasse 3, 8092 Zurich, Switzerland; Corresponding author.
The on-demand design of metamaterials such as lattices and bar structures is typically approached using computational methods due to their inherent complexity. An indispensable element of structural design is a reliable and easy to use FE simulation environment, which in turn not only benefits the design of underlying structures, but also, through easy customization and integration, propels the design of computational methods themselves. In response, this work provides a linear truss and beam FE simulation environment written in MATLAB. The simulation environment supports linear truss elements, Euler-Bernoulli besam elements, and Timoshenko beam elements. It further supports the introduction of self-weight and local truss buckling analysis. A variety of input methods are supported, these are specifically tailored towards simplifying the integration of the FE simulation environment in numerical optimization schemes. With this environment, researchers and design practitioners can easily simulate the mechanical response of complex bar structures without the need for interfacing with commercial FE software through cumbersome Application Programming Interfaces (APIs).
