FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF PLANE FRAME STRUCTURE FOR LARGE DEFORMATION WITHIN ELASTIC RANGE

Abstract

In this dissertation, literature pertinent to the plane frame structure with geometric nonlinearity has been surveyed. A brief analysis of linear plane frame structure as a back-ground is presented and this is extended to the analysis of geometric nonlinear plane frame structure. In this stiffness matrix is derived by using minimum potential energy principle. Membrane strain of the plane frame is evaluated from the elongation of the arc length of the beam axis. The element internal forces are obtained from the membrane strain. An incremental iterative method based on modified Newton-Raphson method has been employed for the solution of nonlinear equilibrium equation. Numerical examples are presented to demonstrate the accuracy of the scheme developed.