While spatial mechanisms are hardly ever desired in real-life, load-bearing structures, in theo-
ry they can be used as a powerful mathematical model. Their usage ranges from finding an
equilibirum by using the principle of virtual displacements to other applications, such as the
plastic hinge method and the analysis of static structures by means of influence lines and
kinematic hinged frames. [1]
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to find methods that can determine whether a structure
is kinematic and, if applicable, can compute the kinematic displacements. For that purpose,
a structural frame software was programmed based on the finite element method which can
conduct linear first-order analyses for kinematic as well as non-kinematic Euler-Bernoulli be-
ams. This software can be downloaded from the following Gitlab Repository [2].
To determine the kinematics and the spatial mechanisms of static structres, two different
methods are suitable: computing the eigenvalues and the Cholesky decomposition. Both me-
thods can be programmed with numerically stable algorithms, which were implemented into
the structural frame software. With regard to the computational complexity and the clarity of
the results, the Cholesky decomposition turns out to be the better choice.
The software written for this thesis can calculate the displacements and internal forces of
non-kinematic structures as well as detect spatial mechnanisms of kinematic structures and
illustrate them visually. This code could now be expanded by computations according to the
plastic hinge method. Due to the existing functions in this software this would be possible
using either the stepwise load increase met
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While spatial mechanisms are hardly ever desired in real-life, load-bearing structures, in theo-
ry they can be used as a powerful mathematical model. Their usage ranges from finding an
equilibirum by using the principle of virtual displacements to other applications, such as the
plastic hinge method and the analysis of static structures by means of influence lines and
kinematic hinged frames. [1]
Therefore, the aim of this thesis is to find methods that can determine whether a structure
i...
»