A universal method for structural static reanalysis of topological modifications

This paper presents a universal method, iterative combined approximation (iterative CA) approach, for structural static reanalysis of all types of topological modifications. The proposed procedure is basically an approximate two-step method. First, the newly added degrees of freedom (DOFs) are assumed to be linked to the original DOFs of the modified structure by means of the Guyan reduction so as to obtain the condensed equation. Second, the displacements of the original DOFs of the modified structure are solved by using the iterative CA approach. And the displacements of the newly added DOFs resulting from topological modification can be recovered. Four numerical examples are given to illustrate the applications of the present approach. The results show that the proposed method is effective for structural static reanalysis of all types of the topological modifications and it is easy to implement on a computer