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The growing power of modern workstations enables engineers to simulate more and more complex mechanical models by computers. In particular, nonlinear problems from structural dynamics are computationally intensive. Hence, there is ongoing demand for improvement of existing algorithms. This PhD thesis deals with the simulation of the dynamics of flexible bodies subject to constitutive and geometrical nonlinearities, as well as discontinuous phenomena arising from collisions. Procedures covered by this book are: Hamilton´s principle, properties of variational mechanics, explicit variational integrators, treatment of holonomic and unilateral constraints, finite elements with continuous assumed gradients, asynchronous integration, variable time steps, collision detection and asynchronous contact with friction.

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Sebastian Wolff, born 1979 in Rostock, studied civil engineering in Weimar and Boulder/CO focusing on structural mechanics and reliability analysis. He obtained his PhD in numerical dynamics at Vienna University of Technology in 2011.

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