Seismosoft | Earthquake Engineering Solutions

Hello,

1. There are no general rules for every building. You should make the modelling decisions based on your building configuration. The typical modelling in most practical applications is without link elements to model the gaps or the flexibility of the contact surface.
2. Not sure what you mean ...

Unfortunately, we do not have any models available that we can provide. The link elements are used to model the interaction of the infill panel to the surrounding concrete members, connecting the nodes of the two.
Seismosoft Support

In our Sample models database, there are simpler models that display the use of isolators (see the SeismoStruct support page on our website).
Unfortunately, larger and more complex models of isolated buildings are proprietary to their respective developers and therefore cannot be distributed ...

The smooth curve is derived under normal loading conditions, e.g. a smooth force-displacement curve, constant axial loads and no dynamic response.
However, indeed the curve seems to be a bit strange, and most likely this is related to the overall dynamic response of the entire structure. Probably ...

Yes, you can specify the percentage of drop. This is done inside the form for the definition of the performance criterion, see the programs documentation for this. The drop is sudden.
Seismosoft Support

Depending on the number of constraints that you have, the Lagrange multipliers increase the number of equations for the matrix calculations. Another issue that might cause the delay is the zero diagonal values introduced in the stiffness matrix that might cause numerical instabilities.
Seismosoft ...

Possibly, the sudden reduction in the strength upon reaching the performance criterion leads to the inability of the structure to sustain the applied loads, hence the divergence. You need to investigate this. Furthermore, the percentage of degradation is a parameter that is selected by the engineer ...

No, this will not considered automatically as a failure. This is basically a monitoring mechanism, i.e. it notifies the user when a certain strain level is reached. However, you can also specify of how the member behaves with the Strength Degradation parameter (Keep Strength, or Residual Strength or ...

The criteria for the definition of the damping parameters depend on the expected damping of the original structure. There are no specific rules that are globally acknowledged as standard rules for the selection of the parameters. Therefore, we cannot propose specific criteria or rules; maybe this is ...

No, there is no automatic performance criterion for a completely axial failure.
However, you can monitor it indirectly with the strain-based performance criteria or with the definition of stress points.
Seismosoft Support