Transfer stiffness coefficient method combined with the concept of substructure synthesis method (Linear free and forced vibration analyses of a straight-line beam structure)

The transfer stiffness coefficient method is developed in order to improve the computation efficiency and the applicability of the transfer influence coefficient method with the introduction of the concept of the substructure synthesis method. In the new method, the structure to be analyzed is divided into substructures, each of which is equally divided into fundamental elements. Each substructure is reconstructed by connecting the fundamental elements and the computation cost is markedly reduced by eliminating the degrees of freedom at the inner nodes of substructures in the process of reconstruction. In addition, the computation procedure, which is the same as that of the transfer influence coefficient method, is applied to the entire structure reconstructed from the substructures in order to improve the computation efficiency even more. As the most fundamental example of the present method, an algorithm is formulated for the free and the forced vibration analyses of a straight-line beam structure. The validity of the present method is confirmed by the results of numerical computation.