A force field superposition approach to plane elastic stress and strain analysis

The force field superposition method for linear elastic problems of stress and strain analysis involves representing the stress and displacement field s in a given solution domain as a superposition of fields generated by a nu mber of point forces. These forces are located outside the solution domain, and in the case of two-dimensional, singly connected finite domain problem s can be uniformly distributed around the perimeter of a circle enclosing t he physical domain. Doubly connected and infinite domain problems can also be treated. The results of some simple test problems show that remarkable a ccuracy can be achieved with very little computational effort relative to o ther numerical methods. More complex problems require the solution domain t o be divided into several subdomains, each of which may be subjected to sup erposition analysis.