Nonlinear Stability of Structures

Book excerpt: 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.