I would like to get some clarification on methods that CAESAR II uses to combine elements for load cases.

The Alegebraic method is self explanatory.

However I am confused by the Scalar method. To quote the UG Now as all of these items are vector quantities, how does CAESAR II combine them using the Scalar method? Does it add the magnitudes of the vectors (e.g. a displacement of 1,1,1 with resultant of 1.732, plus a displacement of -1,-1,-1 with resultant of 1.732 would give 3.464)?

Or does it add the magnitudes of the individual components (which would then be the same as a vector addition)?

If we take this further and apply it to a typical situation where we are determining stresses under an occasional load case - see L10 & L11 in the CAESAR II viewlet on load cases - Scalar is recommended as the combination method. In these two load cases the output is only stress. Does this mean that CAESAR II only looks at the stresses from the contributing load cases, and then combines these using the scalar method? In other words, where stress is specified, CAESAR II does not carry out any combination operations on displacements, forces, moments etc.