Structural Mechanics: How Computers Affected It

The advent of electronic computation had a profound effect on many aspects of present life and, obviously, structural mechanics also was affected. The impact was so significant that some researchers predicted a sort of revolution, the advent of a “discrete” mechanics that would replace the traditional continuum formulation. A few years have elapsed since then and we can state that that such a revolution did not occur as yet. Nevertheless, structural mechanics did not remain unaltered: computations gave rise to a critical review of some aspects which certainly did not alter the foundations of the field, but contributed to clarify some points and improve the overall picture under some respect.