STATIC ANALYSIS OF FRAME STRUCTURES BY THE DIFFERENTIAL QUADRATURE ELEMENT METHOD

In this paper a new version of Differential Quadrature Method (DQM) is proposed and then extended to analyse frame structures. The new method, called the Differential Quadrature Element Method (DQEM), retains all advantages of the earlier version of the differential quadrature method and overcomes some critical shortcomings existing in the original DQM. The proposed method is, however, different from the Quadrature Element Method (QEM) proposed earlier by Striz et al. The methodology is explained in details herein via a differential quadrature beam element and some numerical examples are given to show the efficiency of the present method. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.