Structural Analysis
Introduction to Structural Analysis
Written by Toshimi Taki
Prepared on March 3, 2007
Revised on May 6, 2007
Introduction
I have been an aircraft structures engineer for more than 25 years. I would like to share my knowledge with you.
Application of MS-Excel "Solver" to Structural Analysis
Spreadsheet software in current personal computers is high performance and the software has enough functions for application to engineering problems.
The most popular spreadsheet software, MS-Excel has an add-in tool called gSolverh which performs numerical optimization. gSolverh finds parameters to optimize gobjective valueh with multiple constraints.
We can use gSolverh to solve structural problems applying principle of total potential energy or principle of total complimentary energy.
The method I introduce here can be applied to the following problems in aircraft structural analysis. I developed the method 10 years ago and have applied to many problems of actual aircraft structural analysis.
- Truss (linear, or geometrically non-linear)
- Beam and Ramen (linear, or geometrically non-linear)
- Bolted Joint (linear)
- Beam Column (geometrically non-linear)
- 2-dimensional Elastic Problems (linear, or geometrically non-linear)
- Shear Field Problems (linear)
See more detail in the following topics.
MS-Excel Speadsheet for 2-dimensional Linear Elastic Analysis Using "Solver"
- MS-Excel Speadsheet
- Example - Truss Analysis
- Example - Bolted Joint Analysis
- Example - Shear Field Problem (under construction)
Application of MS-Excel "Solver" to Non-linear Beam Analysis
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