ABSTRACT
In Chapter 8 we have discussed a number of well-known direct integration methods. During the past several decades, a number of direct integration methods have been proposed, and many of them have been widely used in the field of structural dynamics. We observe from the history of development of the direct integration methods that the formulation process of these methods may be basically divided into two main approaches: finite difference-type formulation and finite element-type formulation. Attempts have been made to search for the common basis in the derivation of some well-known computational methods and some general methods have emerged as a result of these studies (Zienkiewicz, 1977; Zienkiewicz et al., 1984; Ghaboussi, 1987; Wu and Ghaboussi,1992). However, in-depth research on the intrinsic relationships among different approaches or methods has not been thoroughly and systematically exploited yet, especially in the detailed relation between the finite element approach and the finite difference approach with reference to the basis of approximations.
