Thesis (MScEng) -- Stellenbosch University, 1976. / pt. A. Theory and computer program -- pt. B. Experimental. / INTRODUCTION: The advent of the high speed computer has revolutionized structural design in all spheres of Engineering. Up till then structural stress analysis was limited to over-simplification of the structure in question to comply with derived classical mathematical solutions. In practice however the picture is very different, the structure usually being complex and highly redundant in nature. The techniques involving Energy Methods to solve such structures have been known for a long time. However they required weeks of hand calculations to solve only a small number of redundancies in a structure. Neville Shute mentions this in his book Slide Rule. The development of Matrix algebra and the finite element method has made it possible to analyse, say, a complete aircraft structure in a matter of days. using a large capacity high speed computer~ Experimental results have shown that finite element stress analysis comes much closer to reality than the dated classical methods.