ABSTRACT
This chapter provides an introduction to the nonlinear analysis of structures. The most common causes of nonlinearity in structures include (i) material nonlinearity — in this case, the relationship between strains and stresses is nonlinear and cannot be simply expressed in terms by Hooke’s law (σ = Eε); (ii) geometric nonlinearity — this occurs when the displacements and rotations of a structural system are large and the geometry of the structure changes significantly; and (iii) contact nonlinearity — this category relates to the situations in which the boundary conditions of a structure change during the analysis.
