Instability analysis of prismatic members by wavelet-Galerkin method

The compactly supported Daubechies wavelet-based numerical solution of boundary value problems is presented in this exploratory paper for the instability analysis of prismatic members. The problems are discretized by the wavelet-Galerkin method. Details an given to compute the connection coefficients on a bounded interval. Numerical examples are presented. The solutions are approximated by Daubechie's scaling function series. Comparisons are made with analytic solutions and with finite element results. Preliminary investigations indicate that wavelet technique provides a powerful alternative to the finite element method. (C) 1999 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.