In recent years powerful engineering workstations for a reasonable price become a valuable tool for the design of complicated constructions such as shell and spatial structures. This availability causes an increasing use of advanced numerical techniques for the static and dynamic analysis of these structures, also in the non-linear range. The I.A.S.S. Working Group nO 13 concerned with "Numerical Methods in Shell and Spatial Structures" and the Department of Civil Engineering of the Katholieke Universiteit Leuven have taken the initiative to organise an International Symposium, providing a forum for discussion and exchange of views between researchers, specialists in numerical analysis on one hand and designers, practising engineer ings on the other hand. These Proceedings contain the papers presented at the Symposium, held in Leuven, July 14-16 1986. The papers are organised in five sections 1. Shell structures 2. Spatial structures 3. Dynamic analysis 4. Non-linear analysis 5. Presentation and interpretation of results The papers covering more than one domain are classified following the main subject. We hope that researchers as well as practising engineers will find a lot of useful information in the book.

From the preface: This volume is a collection of papers presented at the U.S. - Japan Joint Seminar on Stochastic Approaches in Earthquake Engineering held on May 6 and 7, 1987. The general theme of the two-day program was the application of probability and statistics to engineering problems related to strong ground motion. Within this general theme a great variety of subject matters were covered, including earthquake cataloging, ground motion modeling, system identification, failure mechanisms, response and reliability analyses, numerical techniques, and active control. The engineering systems considered included buildings, bridges and life-line networks.

Bringing together the leading European expertise in behaviour and design of silos, this important new book is an essential reference source for all concerned with current problems and developments in silo technology. Silos are used in an enormous range of industries and the handling characteristics of many industrial materials require different app

The most commonly used numerical techniques in solving engineering and mathematical models are the Finite Element, Finite Difference, and Boundary Element Methods. As computer capabilities continue to impro':e in speed, memory size and access speed, and lower costs, the use of more accurate but computationally expensive numerical techniques will become attractive to the practicing engineer. This book presents an introduction to a new approximation method based on a generalized Fourier series expansion of a linear operator equation. Because many engineering problems such as the multi dimensional Laplace and Poisson equations, the diffusion equation, and many integral equations are linear operator equations, this new approximation technique will be of interest to practicing engineers. Because a generalized Fourier series is used to develop the approxi mator, a "best approximation" is achieved in the "least-squares" sense; hence the name, the Best Approximation Method. This book guides the reader through several mathematics topics which are pertinent to the development of the theory employed by the Best Approximation Method. Working spaces such as metric spaces and Banach spaces are explained in readable terms. Integration theory in the Lebesque sense is covered carefully. Because the generalized Fourier series utilizes Lebesque integration concepts, the integra tion theory is covered through the topic of converging sequences of functions with respect to measure, in the mean (Lp), almost uniformly IV and almost everywhere. Generalized Fourier theory and linear operator theory are treated in Chapters 3 and 4.

This volume collects the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of shell and spatial structures, as presented by leading international researchers at the 2nd Italian Workshop on Shell and Spatial Structures (IWSS), held in Turin, Italy on June 26-28, 2023. The conference was meant to give an overview on experimental and theoretical studies, analysis methods and approaches for the design, computational form finding, structural optimization, manufacturing, testing and maintenance techniques and historical reviews of all types of shell and spatial structures. These include, but are not limited to, tension and membrane structures, framed and lattice structures, gridshells and active-bending structures, shell roofs, tensegrity structures, pneumatic and inflatable structures, active and deployable structures, concrete, metal, masonry, timber and bio-based, spatial structures. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, present a wealth of exciting ideas that will open novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaboration among different specialists.

This book presents a detailed discussion of the models that were developed to simulate the collapse and post-collapse behavior of steel pipes. The finite element method offers to engineers the possibility of developing models to simulate the collapse behavior of casings inside oil wells and the collapse behavior of deepwater pipelines. However, if technological decisions are going to be reached from these model results, with implications for the economic success of industrial operations, for the occupational safety and health and for the environment, the engineering models need to be highly reliable. Using these models engineers can quantify the effect of manufacturing tolerances, wear, corrosion, etc. This book describes in great details the experimental programs that are developed to validate the numerical results.

The present volume gives a very modern treatment of all theoretical as well as computational aspects of nonlinear structural stability. The theoretical part starts with the basic concepts of nonlinear static stability and classical dynamics and proceeds subsequently with recent progress in nonlinear dynamic stability and dynamic buckling of structures including an introduction to chaos. The first paper overviews theory and modelling of various structural instability problems. In the second section, nonlinear dynamic buckling and stability of autonomous discrete dissipative structural systems, gradient and non-gradient are discussed. The third paper handles stability and bifurcation phenomena in dynamical systems. The fourth paper contains an introduction to nonlinear dynamics and chaos. Special attention is devoted to the direct computation of critical points and path-switching strategies. A variety of numerical simulations for complicated nonlinear unstable responses also illustrate this part.

This encyclopedia presents an all-embracing collection of analytical surface classes. It provides concise definitions and description for more than 500 surfaces and categorizes them in 38 classes of analytical surfaces. All classes are cross references to the original literature in an excellent bibliography. The encyclopedia is of particular interest to structural and civil engineers and serves as valuable reference for mathematicians.

This book presents a method which is capable of evaluating the deformation characteristics of thin shell structures A free vibration analysis is chosen as a convenient means of studying the displacement behaviour of the shell, enabling it to deform naturally without imposing any particular loading conditions. The strain-displacement equations for thin shells of arbitrary geometry are developed. These relationships are expressed in general curvilinear coordinates and are formulated entirely in the framework of tensor calculus. The resulting theory is not restricted to shell structures characterized by any particular geometric form, loading or boundary conditions. The complete displacement and strain equations developed by Flugge are approximated by the curvilinear finite difference method and are applied to computing the natural frequencies and mode shapes of general thin shells. This approach enables both the displacement components and geometric properties of the shell to be approximated numerically and accurately. The selection of an appropriate displacement field to approximate the deformation of the shell within each finite difference mesh is discussed in detail. In addition, comparisons are made between the use of second and third-order finite difference interpolation meshes.