ABSTRACT
Stiffness is an important physical quantity and is a characteristic of a structure that is used widely. The stiffness of a structure is generally understood to be its ability to resist deformation. Structural stiffness describes the capacity of a structure to resist deformations induced by applied loads. If a discrete model of a structure is considered, the structural stiffness can be completely described by its stiffness matrix. However, it is difficult to sense how stiff a structure is from a stiffness matrix, so in engineering practice a single value of stiffness is more useful.
