PSI - Issue 78

Available online at www.sciencedirect.com

ScienceDirect

Procedia Structural Integrity 78 (2026) 1497–1504

© 2025 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of XX ANIDIS Conference organizers Keywords: OpenSees, FEA Workflow, Open-Source; Abstract Finite element analysis is a fundamental tool for simulating complex engineering problems. However, open-source solutions often lack an integrated workflow encompassing preprocessing, analysis, and post-processing. This study presents a fully open-source finite element analysis workflow that bridges this gap by integrating all phases of the process. The proposed pipeline employs Gmsh APIs for preprocessing, interfaced with a custom-developed “TCLGenerator” capable of producing the necessary TCL scripts which drive simulations within OpenSees, a widely adopted FEA framework. Post-processing is performed using ParaView, enabling advanced visualization and data interpretation. All components of the workflow are designed to operate in parallel com puting environments, significantly enhancing performance in both preprocessing and post-processing stages, particularly when handling large-scale models. A typical use case focused on soil–structure interaction is included to demonstrate the capabilities and versatility of the framework in each step of the workflow. XX ANIDIS Conference An Integrated Open-Source Workflow for OpenSees Stefano Ercolessi a, ∗ , Tony Fierro a , Filippo Santucci de Magistris a , Giovanni Fabbrocino a,b a University of Molise, Via F. De Sanctis, Campobasso 86100, Italy b Construction Technologies Institute, National Research Council of Italy, Via Giosue` Carducci, L’Aquila and 67100, Italy

1. Introduction

Finite elements analysis (FEA) is one of the most commonly used tools to simulate a broad spectrum of engi neering problems. Its ability to solve complex physical phenomena over time has led researchers from several fields, including civil engineering, automotive, and aerospace, to adopt this methodology (Fish and Belytschko (2007); Bathe (1996); Madenci and Guven (2006)). Among the various open-source alternatives, the Open System for Earthquake Engineering (OpenSees) framework (McKenna (2011); McKenna et al. (2000)) has gained considerable traction in recent years. Especially, thanks to its high flexibility, which has encouraged its community to extend and customize the framework with various innovative components (Ercolessi et al. (2025)). Although, originally developed for earth quake engineering applications, its capabilities have progressively evolved to address a wide range of engineering challenges across several disciplines. It can be used considering to main flavours: the traditional Tool Command Language (TCL) interface, and a more recent Python version (Zhu et al. (2018)). Furthermore, OpenSees provides

∗ Corresponding author. E-mail address: stefano.ercolessi@unimol.it

2452-3216 © 2025 The Authors. Published by ELSEVIER B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY-NC-ND license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/4.0) Peer-review under responsibility of XX ANIDIS Conference organizers 10.1016/j.prostr.2025.12.191