ANALYSIS OF NONLINEAR PIEZOELECTRIC CIRCULAR SHALLOW SPHERICAL SHELLS BY DIFFERENTIAL QUADRATURE ELEMENT METHOD

The static behavior of piezoelectric circular spherical shallow shells under both electrical and mechanical loads is studied by using the differential quadrature element method (DQEM). Geometrical nonlinearity effect is considered. Detailed formulations and procedures are given for the first time. Several examples are analyzed and accurate results are obtained by the DQEM. Based on the results in this paper, one may conclude that the DQEM is a useful tool for obtaining solutions of structural elements. It can be seen that the shell shape may be theore tically controlled and snap through may occur when the applied voltage reaches a critical value even without mechanical load for certain geometric configurations.

Differential quadrature time element method for structural dynamics

An accurate and efficient differential quadrature time element method （DQTEM） is proposed for solving ordi- nary differential equations （ODEs）, the numerical dissipation and dispersion of DQTEM is much smaller than that of the direct integration method of single/multi steps. Two methods of imposing initial conditions are given, which avoids the tediousness when derivative initial conditions are imposed, and the numerical comparisons indicate that the first method, in which the analog equations of initial displacements and velocities are used to directly replace the differential quadra- ture （DQ） analog equations of ODEs at the first and the last sampling points, respectively, is much more accurate than the second method, in which the DQ analog equations of initial conditions are used to directly replace the DQ analog equations of ODEs at the first two sampling points. On the contrary to the conventional step-by-step direct integration schemes, the solutions at all sampling points can be obtained simultaneously by DQTEM, and generally, one differential quadrature time element may be enough for the whole time domain. Extensive numerical comparisons validate the effi- ciency and accuracy of the proposed method.

Differentiai-algebraic approach to large deformation analysis of frame structures subjected to dynamic loads

A nonlinear mathematical model for the analysis of large deformation of frame structures with discontinuity conditions and initial displacements, subject to dynamic loads is formulated with arc-coordinates. The differential quadrature element method （DQEM） is then applied to discretize the nonlinear mathematical model in the spatial domain, An effective method is presented to deal with discontinuity conditions of multivariables in the application of DQEM. A set of DQEM discretization equations are obtained, which are a set of nonlinear differential-algebraic equations with singularity in the time domain. This paper also presents a method to solve nonlinear differential-algebra equations. As application, static and dynamical analyses of large deformation of frames and combined frame structures, subjected to concentrated and distributed forces, are presented. The obtained results are compared with those in the literatures. Numerical results show that the proposed method is general, and effective in dealing with disconti- nuity conditions of multi-variables and solving differential-algebraic equations. It requires only a small number of nodes and has low computation complexity with high precision and a good convergence property.