ABSTRACT
In the force method, the choice of the released structure may affect the amount of calculation. For example, in the analysis of a continuous beam, the introduction of hinges above intermediate supports produces a released structure consisting of a series of simple beams, so that the application of a unit value of the redundants has a local effect on the two adjacent spans only. In the displacement method, generally all joint displacements are prevented regardless of the choice of the unknown displacements. Generation of the stiffness matrix is usually not difficult because of the localized effect discussed earlier. A displacement of a joint affects only the members meeting at the given joint. These two properties generally make the displacement method easy to formulate, and it is for these two reasons that the displacement method is more suitable for computer programming.
