An efficient approach to structural static reanalysis with added support constraints

Structural reanalysis is frequently used to reduce the computational cost during the process of design or optimization. The supports can be regarded as the design variables in various types of structural optimization problems. The location, number, and type of supports may be varied in order to yield a more effective design. The paper is focused on structural static reanalysis problem with added supports where some node displacements along axes of the global coordinate system are specified. A new approach is proposed and exact solutions can be provided by the approach. Thus, it belongs to the direct reanalysis methods. The information from the initial analysis has been fully exploited. Numerical examples show that the exact results can be achieved and the computational time can be significantly reduced by the proposed method.