ABSTRACT
In Section 6.6.4, analytical integration was used to integrate the expression of the theorem of virtual work during the evaluation of the stiffness matrix of the beam element. That was relatively easy because a beam element is unidimensional. However, when the number of elements is large, and/or their geometrical shape is general, as is the case in most finite element applications, the use of analytical integration is quite cumbersome and ill-suited for computer coding. The alternative is to use numerical integration.
