Derive the Stiffness Matrix for a Beam Apr 2026

Starting from an old graduate course textbook …

I decided to build a Jupyter notebook and,
within my notebook, derive the stiffness matrix for a beam.
Sounds easy, right? Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn’t.
Especially, note the extra credit work starting in Jupyter cell 18.

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Here’s the book excerpt link.

And here’s the Jupyter notebook link.

And here’s the PNG shape function plot link.

And here’s the HTML shape function plot link.

Enjoy!