The Flexibility Method of Analysis

Abstract

It is a feature of the analysis of structures that each technique can find expression in an alternative or dual form. This is sometimes referred to as the ‘duality’ of structural analysis and it is frequently useful for a student to study the dual problem. Obviously, certain problems are solved more directly by one method than by the other, but the fact remains that the alternative method is available. During the latter part of the last century and the early part of this century, methods of structural analysis proliferated. It is now recognized that all of the methods of structural analysis are based on either a stiffness approach or a flexibility approach, but this was not widely accepted until the advent of the digital computer which prompted further investigative work.