Modeling bending of actual materials?

Grasshopper Kangaroo
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1

I found this thread which talks about how to input EA/L for a given material and use that to feed the strength parameter of a Length-(Line) goal to simulate the actual stiffness of a material,

I attempted to model a .25" diameter stainless rod, half fixed and half cantilevered, with a weight on the free end, but so far it’s not acting correctly.

Questions:

  1. What combo of goals would be best to approach this? I’ve got the rod divided into a poly line and assigned to length-line and angle goals, but I wonder if the rod or beam goals would better?
  2. In terms of assigning strength to a length-line goal, and also assigning loads, is the value divided up into units that would suit each division of the poly line? So for example would each point in the rod be subject to gravity, or would gravity be divided up based on how many points there are and assign that fraction to each point?

Ultimately I want to model rods like this that are not straight, and I’m wondering if the beam goal is best for modeling materials like this, is it possible to model a beam which doesn’t have a straight line as a resting shape?

stainless steel bending attempt.gh (24.6 KB)