Recent content by ScientificMK

No doubt about it: use FEM. There is no conceptual difference between AEM and FEM. I would even say AEM is FEM, but formulated by those who never heard about cohesive elements. They are basically the same thing, but if you are looking for a job after graduation, you better say you know about FEM...

Hi, I am a Prof. of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech and my area is structures and materials. Instead of making lecture notes I made an app to help on the "intuitive" side of things. The idea is to complement traditional education/methods by bringing into the equation the creative side of...

My contribution, and educational simulation game designed to teach mechanics of structures: http://rimoli.gatech.edu/education.html

If you already built it, the problem you have is that (as previously mentioned) your structure is not a truss. What you have built is a frame and thus its members support shear and bending in addition to tension/compression. Equilibrium at the nodes is no longer the way to solve the structure...