Abstract
Step-by-step time integration methods are widely used for solving structural dynamics problem. One difficult yet critical choice an analyst must make is to decide an appropriate time step size. The choice of time step size has a significant effect on solution accuracy and computational expense. The objective of this research is to derive error estimate for newly developed time integration method and develop automatic time step size control algorithm for structural dynamics. A formula for computing error tolerance is derived based on desired period resolution. An automatic time step size control strategy is proposed based on a normalized local error estimate for the generalized-α method. Numerical examples demonstrate the developed strategy satisfies general design criteria for time step size control algorithm for dynamic problem.