For planning, designing, constructing, and maintaining the structures the engineers should evaluate, estimate, and determine the structural safety and feasibility based on the reliable physical quantities. Performing structural analysis, we can analyze the structural behavior of the structure under the specific conditions. Through the rational structural analysis, various structural responses can be evaluated as below: - Deformation and displacement at every location - Internal forces and stresses at every sections - Reaction forces at supports - Energy absorption and dissipation when dynamic forces apply (seismic, impact, collision,…,) So, the physical quantities required for decision making can be obtained by structural analysis.

In this course, we will mainly study theories of stiffness methods for structural analysis. Based on the theoretical approaches, we can analyze the structural behaviors of the truss, beam, and frame structures. For hand calculation we should be familiar with some mathematical methods such as matrix algebra (especially Gauss elimination to obtain the inverse matrix). In this course, we will have training time to use a structural analysis program based on the finite element method.