Computer‐Aided Education in Structural Dynamics

Abstract

Specialized computer‐aided education tools are necessary to provide a transition between theoretical formulations of matrix methods of structural dynamic computations and the fully automated analysis procedures found in general‐purpose analysis packages. This paper presents an interactive computer graphics program, CAL/CGI, that has been developed to represent the relationship between each stage of the formulation, solution, and interpretation of linear static and dynamic structural analysis problems. A modified version of the CAL program, an educational tool for computer‐assisted learning of structural analysis, is used to produce user‐defined matrices that can be visually interpreted by CAL/CGI. A brief overview of CAL and a description of the capabilities of the CAL/CGI module are presented and illustrated using simple examples.