Recent developments in structural sensitivity analysis

Recent developments are reviewed in two major areas of structural sensitivity analysis: sensitivity of static and transient response; and sensitivity of vibration and buckling eigenproblems. Recent developments from the standpoint of computational cost, accuracy, and ease of implementation are presented. In the area of static response, current interest is focused on sensitivity to shape variation and sensitivity of nonlinear response. Two general approaches are used for computing sensitivities: differentiation of the continuum equations followed by discretization, and the reverse approach of discretization followed by differentiation. It is shown that the choice of methods has important accuracy and implementation implications. In the area of eigenproblem sensitivity, there is a great deal of interest and significant progress in sensitivity of problems with repeated eigenvalues. In addition to reviewing recent contributions in this area, the paper raises the issue of differentiability and continuity associated with the occurrence of repeated eigenvalues.