Design variations of nonlinear elastic structures subjected to follower forces (Q1912151)

We study the effect of incorporating the load-stiffness matrix due to follower forces on design variations of nonlinear elastic structures. In general, presence of the follower forces leads to unsymmetric equations for analysis and design variation calculations which are expensive to solve. However, the case of uniform pressure that remains normal to the deformed surface can be formulated to give only symmetric contribution to the tangent stiffness matrix. Analysis is focused on this case, and an explicit expression for the load-stiffness matrix is derived. Numerical examples are used to calculate design variations with and without the load-stiffness matrix included in calculations.