Space elevator thesis

My Master's thesis at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute consisted of a finite element simulation of a space elevator under the gravitational influence of the Earth, Sun, and Moon. My interest was in checking the long-term stability of a space elevator under the varying tidal forces of significant astronomical bodies. I ended up writing a 3D tapered-beam FEA code in MATLAB; the code is in the appendix.

digitool.rpi.edu:8881/dtl_publish/31/20693.html