Object-Oriented Paradigm in Programming for Computer-Aided Analysis of Structures

The concept of object-oriented programming (OOP) has redefined the design and development of large-scale codes worldwide and is now the order of the day in the software industry. Although OOP offers enormous potential in the scientific software business, this innovative programming technique has yet to find a niche in the development of structural engineering software. The present paper is an attempt to highlight the superior programming capability offered by the OOP approach in computer-aided analysis and design of civil engineering structures. The paper presents a brief theoretical background on the important basic and advanced concepts of OOP within the context of structural engineering. The paper explains the relevant fundamentals of object-oriented modeling and design in structural engineering for the orientation of civil engineering professionals who are new to the concept of OOP. The paper provides simple examples of object-oriented programs for elementary structural analysis to illustrate implementation of the OOP paradigm for computational structural analysis. User-code fragments with accompanying commentary are included to provide more detailed directions to structural engineers who wish to adopt the OOP paradigm. The paper also includes a brief review of the evolution that the computational programming paradigm has undergone over the past few decades to cope with the increasing complexity of software. A comparison of currently prevalent programming paradigms is presented to illustrate the relative advantages of OOP for large-scale software applications in structural engineering.