Expansion Method for Continuating at Extended Solution at Singular Points

Abstract

Stability of structures depends on the variation of the load factor on the continuation of their load path beyond a critical point. The computation of the continuation is known to be difficult due to special properties of the stiffness matrices of structures in the vicinity of singular points. A new expansion method is presented that leads to a robust and accurate continuation algorithm. The method is applied to the stability analysis of a spherical dome for symmetric and asymmetric snow loads.