A general procedure for deriving symmetric expressions for the secant and tangent stiffness matrices in finite element analysis

Published in Int. Journal for Numerical Methods in Engineering Vol. 42 (2), pp. 219-236, 1998
doi: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0207(19980530)42:2<219::AID-NME355>3.0.CO;2-E

Abstract

The paper presents a general and straightforward procedure based on the use of the strain energy density for deriving symmetric expressions of the secant and tangent stiffness matrices for finite element analysis of geometrically non‐linear structural problems. The analogy with previously proposed methods for deriving secant and tangent matrices is detailed. The simplicity of the approach is shown in an example of application