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Creating a Structure for One Element

Background on Structures

Structures are a convenient way to organize data. To demonstrate how structures work, consider the triangular element below with three nodes, one at each corner.

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In the above representation, sigepsstruct is refered to as a structure with two fields: eps and sig. A useful way to visualize this is that sigepsstruct is a box that contains two smaller boxes, eps and sig, which hold the strain and stress values, respectively. So if I want, say, the stress values, I ask MATLAB to open the sig box within sigepsstruct and look inside.

Create a structure

Let's create the above structure in MATLAB. Start MATLAB. Create a working directory at an appropriate location using the Current Directory window. If you cannot see this window, select Main Menu > Desktop > Current Directory. You can right-click in this window to access the option for creating a new folder (i.e. directory). Browse to this folder to make this your working directory.

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I hear you saying "this is a piece of cake, gimme more!". So let's move on to Step 2.

Go to Step 2: Creating a structure for two elements

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