Pseudo-follower reactive force as a means of improving the load carrying capacity of structural systems

Abstract

This paper presents a method for improving the carrying capacity of structures due to the loss of overall structural stability. The proposed method is based on adding a displacement dependent force to a support according to a prescribed rule. Simple numerical examples are presented. These examples are confined to the application of the pseudo-follower reactive force and for in-plane framed structures. The results are obtained with the assumption that the change of the geometrical configuration due to loading is negligibly small before the instability occurs. The numerical results show that a significant improvement in the stability can be expected by the application of the proposed reaction system. In this paper only systems with non-conservative follower forces not explicitly dependent on time are considered.