Efficiency of the dynamic relaxation method in the stabilisation process of bridge and building frame

Abstract

More and more complex Civil Engineering problems are being considered in computational mechanics with the invention of high-quality computing techniques. In addition, the computational cost and storage requirement for complex and or large structures have increased dramatically, leading to an increased interest in removing the difficulties using any form of parallel computing. The process of applying the preload for parallel computing to any unstable structures is called a stabilising process, such as the Dynamic Relaxation Method (DRM) is one. This method minimises the energy by a simple vector iteration technique, which ultimately leads the structure to a static equilibrium state. The present study aims to highlight the utility of the DRM in the stabilisation process for small structures like building frames and large and or complicated structures such as bridges before actual transient analysis. Therefore, the present manuscript discusses the computational cost, CPU runtime, multiple increases of mass and rigid body displacement of building frames and bridges. The DRM allows an explicit solver to conduct a dynamic analysis by increasing the damping until the kinetic energy drops to a proposed value. The simulation of the DRM starts to find the equilibrium state with minimal dynamic effect, which is required to apply at the beginning of the solution phase to obtain the initial stress and displacement field before the start of the actual analysis.