Fatigue control of thin-walled structures

The control of the ultimate fatigue behaviour of slender thin-walled structures is treated in the paper. A macro- and micromechanical simulation model adopting the neural network approach is used for the numerical analysis of the problem. The numerical treatment of the non-linear problems is made using the updated Lagrangian formulation of motion combined with the pseudo-force technique in the FETM-approach. Each step of the iteration approaches the solution of the linear problem and the feasibility of the parallel processing and neural network numerical techniques is established. The application on the actual slender bridge is made in order to demonstrate the efficiency of the procedures suggested. Copyright (C) 2003 John Wiley Sons, Ltd.