REANALYSIS FOR STRUCTURAL MODIFICATIONS IN BOUNDARY-ELEMENT RESPONSE AND DESIGN SENSITIVITY ANALYSIS

A reanalysis technique is presented for obtaining changes in response variables due to changes in design parameters with the boundary-element method. The approach is considered for static response analysis and design sensitivity analysis. Two iterative schemes, one based on total quantities and another based on incremental quantities, are developed. These schemes avoid the computationally expensive step of factorization of the coefficient matrix for the modified structure. Numerical results are obtained for analyses using 1) single-zone discretization, 2) multizone discretization, and 3) multizone discretization with condensation. The convergence trends for both iterative algorithms are presented for the response analysis and the design sensitivity analysis. A substantial economy in computer time is obtained using the present developments and is demonstrated here through CPU timings. © 1990 American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Inc., All rights reserved.