Improvement of the accuracy of scaled corrector method and proposal of a bifurcation analysis procedure for symmetric structures

The Scaled corrector method has come to be acknowledged as an efficient bifurcation analysis procedure that does not require the eigenvalue analysis; however, its accuracy remains to be improved. As a remedy of this, we propose a new bifurcation analysis procedure that combines the mechanism of bifurcation of symmetric structure with the Scaled corrector method. The bifurcation mode is made highly accurate by decomposing Scaled corrector vector into a number of vectors and, in turn, choosing the predominant one. The usefulness of this technique was demonstrated through the application to the bifurcation analysis of the hexagonal truss dome to extract the bifurcation mode, and to search for the bifurcation point with high accuracy.