Interactive Nonlinear Structural Analysis

Suspension cables have been analyzed under fixed, rolling, and distributed loads with allowance for temperature and finite support stiffnesses. Design and analysis problems, concerned with the determination of hoop shapes and stresses in long cylindrical inflatable dams, have also been solved. Elastic beam-column problems are suited to the method which can be programmed to carry out second-order analyses of beam columns or post-buckling analyses of centrally loaded struts. Elastically supported beams have been treated where the beam sections need not be uniform or the subgrade moduli constant. Data are entered by interrogation, guessed initial values initiate chain calculations as in transfer matrix techniques, and the initial variables are automatically improved by the Newton method, under the operator’s control.