The behavior of beam elements can be determined by numerical integration of the section (either *BEAM SECTION or *BEAM GENERAL SECTION) or can be given directly in terms of area, moments of inertia, and torsional constant (*BEAM GENERAL SECTION).

When *BEAM GENERAL SECTION is used with numerical integration, the calculations are done once at the start of the simulation, and elastic behavior is assumed.

ABAQUS includes a number of standard cross-section shapes. Other shapes, provided they are “thin-walled,” can be modeled using SECTION=ARBITRARY.

The orientation of the cross-section must be defined either by specifying a third node or by defining a vector as part of the element property definition. The orientations can be plotted in ABAQUS/Viewer.

The beam cross-section can be offset from the nodes that define the beam. This procedure is useful in modeling stiffeners on shells.

The linear and quadratic beams include the effects of shear deformation. The cubic beams do not account for shear flexibility. The open-section beam elements correctly model the effects of torsion and warping (including warping constraints) in thin-walled, open sections.

Multi-point constraints and constraint equations can be used to connect degrees of freedom at nodes to model pinned connections, rigid links, etc.

“Bending moment”-type plots allow the results of one-dimensional elements, such as beams, to be visualized easily.

Hard copies of ABAQUS/Viewer plots can be obtained in PostScript (PS), Encapsulated PostScript (EPS), Tag Image File Format (TIFF), and Portable Network Graphics (PNG) formats.