An electrical circuit theoretical method for time- and frequency- domain solutions of the structural mechanics problems

Shrinking device dimensions in integrated circuit technology made integrated circuits with millions of components a reality. As a result of this advance, electrical circuit simulators that can handle very large number of components have emerged. These programs use new circuit simulation techniques and can find solutions accurately and quickly. In this paper, we apply these techniques to structural mechanics problems by adopting electrical circuit equivalents. We first apply finite element formulation to the mechanical problem. The obtained sets of equations are treated as if they are sets of equations of an equivalent electrical circuit which consists of linear circuit elements such as capacitors, inductors and controlled sources. The equivalent circuit is obtained in the form of a circuit netlist and solved using a general purpose electrical circuit simulator. Several examples showing the advantages of the circuit simulation techniques are demonstrated. Asymptotic waveform evaluation technique which is widely used for simulation of large electrical circuits is also studied for the same examples and the speed-up advantage is shown. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.