Family of Structure-Dependent Explicit Methods for Structural Dynamics

AbstractA new family of structure-dependent methods is presented. Although the numerical properties of this family method are similar to those of the previously published family method developed by Chang, their difference equations are essentially different. In fact, for the proposed family method, both the difference equations are structure dependent, whereas for the previously published family method, only the difference equation for the displacement increment is structure dependent. In general, the two family methods can have unconditional stability and second-order accuracy, and they both do not involve nonlinear iterations for nonlinear systems. However, some differences are found. In fact, the major differences are overshooting behaviors and implementation details, which are addressed. It is confirmed that the proposed family method is computationally more efficient than the previously published family method.