Lowder, H. E. | Search NASA

NASA NTRS1975

Structural reanalysis via a mixed method

A study is made of the approximate structural reanalysis technique based on the use of Taylor series expansion of response variables in terms of design variables in conjunction with the mixed method. In addition, comparisons are made with two reanalysis techniques based on the displacement method. These techniques are the Taylor series expansion and the modified reduced basis. It is shown that the use of the reciprocals of the sizing variables as design variables (which is the natural choice in the mixed method) can result in a substantial improvement in the accuracy of the reanalysis technique. Numerical results are presented for a space truss structure.

Noor, A. K.↗

NASA NTRS1974

Approximate techniques of structural reanalysis

A study is made of two approximate techniques for structural reanalysis. These include Taylor series expansions for response variables in terms of design variables and the reduced-basis method. In addition, modifications to these techniques are proposed to overcome some of their major drawbacks. The modifications include a rational approach to the selection of the reduced-basis vectors and the use of Taylor series approximation in an iterative process. For the reduced basis a normalized set of vectors is chosen which consists of the original analyzed design and the first-order sensitivity analysis vectors. The use of the Taylor series approximation as a first (initial) estimate in an iterative process, can lead to significant improvements in accuracy, even with one iteration cycle. Therefore, the range of applicability of the reanalysis technique can be extended. Numerical examples are presented which demonstrate the gain in accuracy obtained by using the proposed modification techniques, for a wide range of variations in the design variables.

Noor, A. K.↗