Fictitious Time Step for the Kinetic Dynamic Relaxation Method

Dynamic relaxation (DR) is an iterative method for solving simultaneous sets of equations, which govern the behavior of static structures. One of the most effective techniques in this category is the kinetic damping approach. In this research, a new formula for the fictitious time step is obtained by error analysis to utilize in the kinetic DR method. The developed algorithm is applied to the nonlinear analysis of several plane- and space-trusses, and also structural frames. Numerical results indicate that the proposed fictitious time step has a significant effect on improving the convergence rate of the kinetic DR method.