ON THE SIGN OF THE DETERMINANT OF THE STRUCTURAL STIFFNESS MATRIX FOR DETERMINATION OF LOADING INCREMENT IN ARC-LENGTH ALGORITHMS.

In this paper, we have proved in theory that the sign of the current stiffness matrix provides a correct indicator for determining the sign of the loading parameter in the arc-length algorithm before the first bifurcation point is encountered, but may not be the case thereafter. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]