A new frame super-element in static and dynamic analyses

Abstract

A new technique of constructing a frame super- element is introduced to reduce the computational efforts for solving complicated frame problems. By selecting a small number of the frame joints as master nodes, the other joints are treated as slave parameters whose unknowns are related to those of master nodes by interpolation. Following the invariance properties of energy, the slave parameters are eliminated by matrix transformation and the resulting equations of motion are expressed in terms of the master parameters only. Thus, the order of the overall matrices is greatly reduced. The method is approximate in the traditional finite element sense, ie, the accuracy of solution may be improved with finer subdivision or by taking more master nodes inside each super- element (a).