A CONSTRAINED, LEAST-SQUARES APPROACH FOR HYBRID STRESS-ANALYSIS OF ELASTIC BODIES

The advent of computer technology has given rise to "new" solution methods in engineering. Finite element methods and boundary integral equation methods have been developed and used extensively by analysts simply because the computer allows one to model complex structures and obtain approximate solutions. An essential, yet difficult to quantify, part of the analysis of any structure is the estimation of the actual boundary conditions. The enclosed work investigates how one may use experimentally measured displacement data with random errors as a part of a hybrid approach to quantify the stresses in an elastic body under load. It is shown that by using measured displacement data, together with both a least squares approach for minimizing the effects of the measurement errors and also constraints to impose analytical requirements on the solution, the stresses throughout an elastic body can be computed with known accuracy, even in the presence of random displacement errors.