José Abell's Research Blog

Join our research group: PhD and postdoctoral opportunities

I'm looking for researchers who want to build, test and use better models for problems that matter in civil engineering. Our group at Universidad de los A…

Upgrading My OpenSees SUPERCOMPUTER: 100G Network, Diskless Nodes & an RTX 5090!

In this video, I upgrade my OpenSees cluster with a 100G network, diskless nodes, and an RTX 5090.

Sneak preview of upcoming paper!

Sneak preview of an upcoming research paper. Stay tuned for more details!

Journal Club: Dynamic amplification of isolated shear walls: Insights from layered shell modeling

This journal club video discusses our recent paper on dynamic shear amplification in reinforced concrete shear walls, published in Engineering Structures.…

Paper17 - Dynamic amplification of isolated shear walls: Insights from layered shell modeling

Summary: New paper published in Engineering Structures on dynamic shear amplification in reinforced concrete shear walls using high-fidelity layered shell…

HPC in Civil Engineering for the next 25 years!

This video is kind of a research statement on where I want to be contributing for the rest of my career.

The 2025 Group Asado

The 2025 Research Group Asado. From the left. Felipe Elgueta (Past MS), Prof. Álvaro Paul, Nicolás Mora Bowen (PhD Student), Isidora Linacre (Felipe's wif…

Temas de Magister/Memoria 2024

Esta es mi oferta de temas de magister o proyecto de título: Magister Tema 2024-1: "Aplicación de Inteligencia Artificial al diseño por desempeño de estru…

All about tetrahedral elements

This tutorial explores the advantages on using high-order meshes for finite-element modeling of solids using continuum formulations. Please get the latest…

Building the Ultimate OpenSees Rig: HPC Cluster SUPERCOMPUTER Using Gaming Workstations!

In this video, I take you on a behind-the-scenes tour of my custom-built cluster, designed specifically for high-performance parallel computing using OpenSees.

Animate transient results with gmsh2opensees

Another tutorial on leveraging the power of OpenSeesPy with gmsh and my library gmsh2opensees. In this one we also look into performing transient analysis…

Using OpenSeesPy with gmsh in python

In this tutorial, I teach you how to create wonderful continuum FE models in OpenSeesPy using gmsh as pre and post-processor. We'll be using my new module…

Advanced seismic analysis with H5DRM OpenSees load pattern

Check out the new H5DRM load pattern for DRM-based seismic analysis on OpenSees. You can find the documentation and all the example files here. DRM stands…

Building OpenSees and OpenSeesPy on Ubuntu 22.04 using CMAKE

In this short video I teach you how to compile the latest OpenSees and OpenSeesPy on Ubuntu Linux 22.04. Compilation is setup with no "bells and whistles"…

EOSD2022 Recap

The Eurasian OpenSees days 2022 conference was a lot of fun! Especially because I had the opportunity to go with two students: Omar Oyarce and Alberto Hur…

EOSD2022 Summer School SSI Modeling

Short applicative lecture given at Eurasian OpenSees Days 2022 in Turin, Italy on July 6th. Supplementary material: Slides mshopstools.py - A toy library …

Buidling a computer cluster for OpenSees

As part of my recently-awarded research grant where I'll study the effects of near-field earthquakes in Santiago Chile (more on that in the future, maybe)…

New 2021 additions to OpenSees

2021 has almost gone, I haven't written on my blog almost all year, but there has been progress! I've made a bunch of small contributions this year to Ope…

Temas de Magister/Memoria 2022

Al final de la licenciatura (terminando "Métodos Computacionales en Obras Civiles") el alumno UANDES de la especialidad de Obras Civiles debe considerar s…

Temas de Magister/Memoria 2021

Al final de la licenciatura el alumno UANDES debe comenzar a considerar si extenderá su carrera con un magister de continuidad o cerrará con un proyecto d…

Compiling OpenSees 3.2.0 on Ubuntu 20.10: a tutorial and commentary

In this short video I teach you how to compile OpenSees 3.2.0 on Ubuntu Linux 20.10. Compilation is setup with no "bells and whistles", meaning its not op…

STKO OpenSees review

A created a short #review of STKO: a pre/post processor for #OpenSees which I think is really cool and brings fresh new stuff into OpenSees to benefit all…

Nicolás Galano defends his MS Thesis

Congratulations Nico! Remember this tweet? I'm proud to announce the MS defense of my (co)-MS student Nicolás Galano, who worked on extending #PFEM on #Op…

Paper04 - Modelling the cyclic ratcheting of sands through memory-enhanced bounding surface plasticity.

Abstract The modelling and simulation of cyclic sand ratcheting is tackled via a plasticity model formulated within the critical-state, bounding-surface S…

Large earthquake in Mexico triggers tsunami warnings

The magnitude I gave came from the Tsunami threat record. pic.twitter.com/2h5dppVLLQ— José A. Abell 🇻🇦🇨🇱 (@jose_abell) June 23, 2020

#EngineeringWizardry | 00 | new series

Stuck teaching during COVID-19 lockdowns in Chile has reminded me one crucial thing about statics (the class I'm teaching this first semester in the south…

Using my gmshtranslator python tool to interface gmsh with opensees.

I wrote the gmshtranslator tool a while back during my PhD, to easily parse gmsh msh files to any other format. I've been using it for years now with not …

Paper03 - Earthquake Soil Structure Interaction of Nuclear Power Plants, differences in response to 3-D, 3 × 1-D, and 1-D excitations

Summary: Finally! First paper since PhD was accepted for publication. I'll take this opportunity to start a tradition and review my own papers here. I thi…

Video of 2-D SSI model of an RC Shear Wall Building

The RC shear-wall building is modeled in OpenSees using non-linear fiber based beam column elements. Soil is modeled as a continuum using quad elements an…

New cable element in OpenSees

With my student, Pablo Ibañez, we implemented a new catenary cable element in OpenSees. This element is based on the work by Salehi et al[1]. The stiffnes…

OpenSees coming to python!

One of the gripes a lot of people have with OpenSees is that it adopts TCL as its interpreter language. Originally, OpenSees was conceived as a framework,…

Finite Elements for Shallow Water Equations

Talk Given at IngeoKring 2016 - Physics-Based Earthquake-Soil-Structure Interaction for Near-Field Induced Seismicity

This is a talk given at the IngeoKring 2016 Autumn symposium, hosted at TU Delft.

Paralelism in the RealESSI Simulator

by: José Abell Paralelism in the RealESSI Simulator Introduction The Real ESSI Simulator[1 and 2] is a system for simulation of ESSI (Earthquake-Soil-Stru…

CS261 - HW # 0 : Describe a parallel application

by: José Abell Biography I am a PhD student at UCDavis CompGeoMech since Sept 2011, working on our in-house high-performance FEM simulation system. I come…

Simulation of a surface wave (Rayleigh)

This simulation, done in the UCD ESSI simulator and visualized in VisIt using VisIt-ESSI plugin, shows the passage of a surface wave (Rayleigh wave). The …

Visualizing ESSI output with VisIt-ESSI

VisIt-ESSI is a plugin for the VisIt post-processor created my CompGeoMech. It allows for remote (soon parallel also) visualization of outputs produced by…

SNE # 01. Example of ESSI simulation and visualization with visitESSI

These are the results of a simple elastic-domain simulation. Mesh consists of 154523 Nodes (46359 DOFs) 1250 27 node bricks (LT formulation) 1200 time-ste…

NTS (Note-To-Self): Creating dynamically linked libraries

A nice extensive tutorial can be found here. In a nutshell: gcc -Wall -fPIC -c \*.c gcc -shared -Wl,-soname,libctest.so.1 -o libctest.so.1.0 \*.o mv libct…

SNE # 0. Stochastic inverse pendulum

This is the first installment of "Small Numerical Experiments" (SNE), a section where I upload and comment (briefly) some small numerical example. The pur…