A New Explicit Time Integration Scheme for Nonlinear Dynamic Analysis

An explicit time integration method is presented for the linear and nonlinear dynamic analyses of structures. Using two parameters and employing the Taylor series expansion, a family of second-order accurate methods for the solution of dynamic problems is derived. The proposed scheme includes the central difference method as a special case, while damping is shown to exert no effect on the solution accuracy. The proposed method is featured by the following facts: (i) the relative period error is almost zero for specific values of the parameters; (ii) the numerical dissipation contained can help filter out spurious high-frequency components; and (iii) the crucial lower modes are generally unaffected in the integration. Although the proposed method is conditionally stable, it has an appropriate region of stability, and is self-starting. The numerical tests indicate the improved performance of the proposed technique over the central difference method.