Structural reanalysis for a modified structure

Abstract

Structural reanalysis aims to determine the variations in the displacement of a structure due to the addition or deletion of elements without solving the full degrees of freedom. The iterations change the design parameters at each step and utilize the factorization of the stiffness matrix of the initial design. This study develops a new reanalysis method to determine the additional forces that act on the initial structure and the displacements of the modified structure. It utilizes the compatibility conditions at the interfaces between the initial structure and the added or deleted members as static constraints, and applies the generalized inverse method to describe the static behavior of the constrained structure. The structural elements that are added may be statically stable substructures or floating members that possess rigid-body freedom. Examples are included to show the effectiveness of the proposed method.