A numerical study on the symmetrization of tangent stiffness matrix in non-linear analysis using corotational approach

摘要

Abstract In the corotational kinematics (EIRC), the movement is decomposed in deformational and rigid body components using projection operators. Large rigid body translations and rotations, and infinitesimal deformation tensors are adopted. In this way, a non-symmetric stiffness matrix is obtained for the finite element. Literature points that this matrix may be symmetrized in the usual way and the original non-symmetric matrix tends to be in a symmetric form as equilibrium is approached. This paper performed symmetrization studies using Frobenius norm and Absolute Maximum Coefficient of the anti-symmetric part of stiffness matrix in several numerical analyses with high non-linearity solved with an incremental-iterative scheme. An element independent corotational (EICR) kinematics is used to analyze non-linear spatial frames with 3D Euler-Bernoulli beam elements. The results show that this symmetrization not always occurs and depends significantly on the magnitude of displacements and finite-element mesh refinement. The authors demonstrated that, in some cases, the symmetrization would only take place with very refined meshes when the discretized structure approaches the continuum. In this way, the current literature and general mathematical proof of that symmetrization have to be restated.