This Tutorial Manual contains an overview of dealing with structural problems such as raft, piled raft, pile group, a system of rafts, slab floor, grid, truss, beam, plane frame, and plane stress. It describes the processes of modeling the problems, carrying out the analyses, viewing and printing the results. It provides the user skills, which he needs to use ELPLA. It also takes the user gradually through some simple examples. Carrying out these examples will help the user to become familiar with the most important functions of ELPLA. Before attempting a real project with ELPLA, it is recommended that the user tries to carry out the given problems.

 

This Tutorial Manual will not present the theoretical background of modeling the problems. For more information concerning the methods of analysis, a complete reference for calculation methods and numerical models is well documented in the User’s Guide of ELPLA. In addition, a complete reference for all menus and dialog boxes of the program is to be found in the User’s Guide or in the online help system.

 

The usage of the program is typically such that first data files are created describing a certain problem through the "Data" Tab. Then the project problem is analyzed by calculation commands through the "Solver" Tab. Finally, results can be presented as graphical drawings, graphs, and tables through the "Result" Tab.

 

This Tutorial contains 13 examples. For each example discussed in this Tutorial, data files and some computed files are included in ELPLA software package. The file names and contents of the examples are given as follows. Besides, a key figure of each problem is shown that contains the main data concerning the structure shape and loads. Examples can be run again by ELPLA to examine the details of the analysis or to see how the problem was defined or computed and to display, print, or plot the results.