A new super convergent thin walled composite beam element for analysis of box beam structures

In this paper, a new composite thin wall beam element of arbitrary cross-section with open or closed contour is developed. The formulation incorporates the effect of elastic coupling, restrained warping, transverse shear deformation associated with thin walled composite structures. A first order shear deformation theory is considered with the beam deformation expressed in terms of axial, spanwise and chordwise bending, corresponding shears and twist. The formulated locking free element uses higher order interpolating polynomial obtained by solving static part of the coupled governing differential equations. The formulated element has super convergent properties as it gives the exact elemental stiffness matrix. Static and free vibration analyses are performed for various beam configuration and compared with experimental and numerical results available in current literature. Good correlation is observed in all cases with extremely small system size. The formulated element is used to study the wave propagation behavior in box beams subjected to high frequency loading such as impact. Simultaneous existence of various propagating modes are graphically captured. Here the effect of transverse shear on wave propagation characteristics in axial and transverse directions are investigated for different ply layup sequences.     

Large deflection of a non-linear,elastic, asymmetric Ludwick cantilever beam subjected to horizontal force,vertical force and bending torque at the free end

The investigated cantilever beam is characterized by a constant rectangular cross-section and is subjected to a concentrated constant vertical load, to a concentrated constant horizontal load and to a concentrated constant bending torque at the free end. The same beam is made by an elastic non-linear asymmetric Ludwick type material with different behavior in tension and compression. Namely the constitutive law of the proposed material is characterized by two different elastic moduli and two different strain exponential coefficients. The aim of this study is to describe the deformation of the beam neutral surface and particularly the horizontal and vertical displacements of the free end cross-section. The analysis of large deflection is based on the Euler–Bernoulli bending beam theory, for which cross-sections, after the deformation, remain plain and perpendicular to the neutral surface; furthermore their shape and area do not change. On the stress viewpoint, the shear stress effect and the axial force effect are considered negligible in comparison with the bending effect. The mechanical model deduced from the identified hypotheses includes two kind of non-linearity: the first due to the material and the latter due to large deformations. The mathematical problem associated with the mechanical model, i.e. to compute the bending deformations, consists in solving a non-linear algebraic system and a non-liner second order ordinary differential equation. Thus a numerical algorithm is developed and some examples of specific results are shown in this paper.     

Coupled bending and torsional vibration of nonsymmetrical axially loaded thin-walled Bernoulli–Euler beams

The dynamic transfer matrix is formulated for a straight uniform and axially loaded thin-walled Bernoulli–Euler beam element whose elastic and inertia axes are not coincident by directly solving the governing differential equations of motion of the beam element. Bernoulli–Euler beam theory is used, and the cross section of the beam does not have any symmetrical axes. The bending vibrations in two perpendicular directions are coupled with torsional vibration and the effect of warping stiffness is included. The dynamic transfer matrix method is used for calculation of exact natural frequencies and mode shapes of the nonsymmetrical thin-walled beams. Numerical results are given for a specific example of thin-walled beam under a variety of end conditions, and exact numerical solutions are tabulated for natural frequencies and solutions calculated by the other method are also tabulated for comparison. The effects of axial force and warping stiffness are also discussed.     

Solution of free vibration equations of semi-rigid connected Reddy–Bickford beams resting on elastic soil using the differential transform method

The literature regarding the free vibration analysis of Bernoulli–Euler and Timoshenko beams under various supporting conditions is plenty, but the free vibration analysis of Reddy–Bickford beams with variable cross-section on elastic soil with/without axial force effect using the Differential Transform Method (DTM) has not been investigated by any of the studies in open literature so far. In this study, the free vibration analysis of axially loaded and semi-rigid connected Reddy–Bickford beam with variable cross-section on elastic soil is carried out by using DTM. The model has six degrees of freedom at the two ends, one transverse displacement and two rotations, and the end forces are a shear force and two end moments in this study. The governing differential equations of motion of the rectangular beam in free vibration are derived using Hamilton’s principle and considering rotatory inertia. Parameters for the relative stiffness, stiffness ratio and nondimensionalized multiplication factor for the axial compressive force are incorporated into the equations of motion in order to investigate their effects on the natural frequencies. At first, the terms are found directly from the analytical solutions of the differential equations that describe the deformations of the cross-section according to the high-order theory. After the analytical solution, an efficient and easy mathematical technique called DTM is used to solve the governing differential equations of the motion. The calculated natural frequencies of semi-rigid connected Reddy–Bickford beam with variable cross-section on elastic soil using DTM are tabulated in several tables and figures and are compared with the results of the analytical solution where a very good agreement is observed.     

A shearable and thickness stretchable finite strain beam model for soft structures

Soft materials and structures have recently attracted lots of research interests as they provide paramount potential applications in diverse fields including soft robotics, wearable devices, stretchable electronics and biomedical engineering. In a previous work, an Euler–Bernoulli finite strain beam model with thickness stretching effect was proposed for soft thin structures subject to stiff constraint in the width direction. By extending that model to account for the transverse shear effect, a Timoshenko-type finite strain beam model within the plane-strain context is developed in the present work. With some kinematic hypotheses, the finite deformation of the beam is analyzed, constitutive equations are deduced from the theory of finite elasticity, and by employing the standard variational method, the equilibrium equations and associated boundary conditions are derived. In the limit of infinitesimal strain, the new model degenerates to the classical extensible and shearable elastica model. The corresponding incremental equilibrium equations and associated boundary conditions are also obtained. Based on the new beam model, analytical solutions are given for simple deformation modes, including uniaxial tension, simple shear, pure bending, and buckling under an axial load. Furthermore, numerical solution procedures and results are presented for cantilevered beams and simply supported beams with immovable ends. The results are also compared with the previously developed finite strain Euler–Bernoulli beam model to demonstrate the significance of transverse shear effect for soft beams with a small length-to-thickness ratio. The developed beam model will contribute to the design and analysis of soft robots and soft devices.     

The effect of transverse normal strain in contact of an orthotropic beam pressed against a circular surface

The contact problem of a straight orthotropic beam pressed onto a rigid circular surface is considered using beam theories that account for transverse shear and transverse normal deformations. The circular nature of the rigid surface emphasizes the difference between Euler Bernoulli theory behavior, where point loads develop at the edge of contact, and the higher order theories that predict non-singular pressure distributions. While Timoshenko beam theory is the simplest theory that addresses this behavior, the prediction of a maximum value of pressure at the edge of contact contradicts the elasticity theory result that contact pressure must drop to zero. Transverse normal strain is therefore introduced, both to study this fundamental discrepancy and to include an important effect in many contact problems. To investigate this effect, higher order beam theories that account for both constant and linear transverse normal strain through the beam thickness are derived using the principle of virtual work. The resulting orthotropic beam theories depend on the bending stiffness (EI), shear stiffness (GA), axial stiffness (EA₁) and transverse normal stiffness (EA₂), which are independent stiffness parameters that can differ by orders of magnitude. The above mentioned contact problem is then solved analytically for these theories, along with the Timoshenko beam model which assumes zero transverse normal strain. The results for different orthotropic materials show that inclusion of transverse normal deformation has a significant effect on the contact pressure solution. Furthermore, the solution using higher order beam theories encompasses the two extremes of a Hertz-like contact pressure when the half contact length is smaller than the thickness of the beam, and the Timoshenko beam theory case when the half contact length is much larger than the thickness. Concerning the behavior of the pressure at the edge of contact, adherence to the boundary conditions required by the principle of virtual work, shows that while the pressure does tend to zero, it does not become zero unless artificially enforced. In this regard the solution for the case of linear strain is better than that for constant strain. All beam solutions are validated with plane elasticity solutions obtained using the commercial finite element software ABAQUS.     

Nonlinear dynamic analysis of circular plates with varying thickness

The BEM is developed for nonlinear free and forced vibrations of circular plates with variable thickness undergoing large deflections. General boundary conditions are considered, which may be also nonlinear. The problem is formulated in terms of displacements. The solution is based on the concept of the analog equation, according to which the two coupled nonlinear differential equations with variable coefficients pertaining to the in-plane radial and transverse deformation are converted to two uncoupled linear ones of a substitute beam with unit axial and unit bending stiffness, respectively, under fictitious quasi-static load distributions. Numerical examples are presented which illustrate the method and demonstrate its accuracy.     

由基模态构造任意支撑杆的多项式型轴向刚度

给出了当杆的横截面积均匀而材料线密度为已知多项式时，由基模态构造任意支撑方式下杆的多项式型的轴向刚度系致的方法，证明了所得轴向刚度的正值性．     

变截面(变刚度)纵横弯曲梁

分析了受纵横弯曲载荷联合作用的变截面（变刚度）梁柱问题,并在钻柱力学分析中得到应用．     

Enhanced nonlinear 3D Euler–Bernoulli beam with flying support

Using Hamilton’s principle the coupled nonlinear partial differential motion equations of a flying 3D Euler–Bernoulli beam are derived. Stress is treated three dimensionally regardless of in-plane and out-of-plane warpings of cross-section. Tension, compression, twisting, and spatial deflections are nonlinearly coupled to each other. The flying support of the beam has three translational and three rotational degrees of freedom. The beam is made of a linearly elastic isotropic material and is dynamically modeled much more accurately than a nonlinear 3D Euler–Bernoulli beam. The accuracy is caused by two new elastic terms that are lost in the conventional nonlinear 3D Euler–Bernoulli beam theory by differentiation from the approximated strain field regarding negligible elastic orientation of cross-sectional frame. In this paper, the exact strain field concerning considerable elastic orientation of cross-sectional frame is used as a source in differentiations although the orientation of cross-section is negligible.     

Buckling load optimization of beams

In this paper, shape optimization is used to optimize the buckling load of a Euler–Bernoulli beam having constant volume. This is achieved by varying appropriately the beam cross section so that the beam buckles with the maximum or a prescribed buckling load. The problem is reduced to a nonlinear optimization problem under equality and inequality constraints as well as specified lower and upper bounds. The evaluation of the objective function requires the solution of the buckling problem of a beam with variable stiffness subjected to an axial force. This problem is solved using the analog equation method for the fourth-order ordinary differential equation with variable coefficients. Besides its accuracy, this method overcomes the shortcomings of a possible FEM solution, which would require resizing of the elements and recomputation of their stiffness properties during the optimization process. Several example problems are presented that illustrate the method and demonstrate its efficiency.     

Exact solution for axial and transverse dynamic response of functionally graded nanobeam under moving constant load based on nonlocal elasticity theory

This paper aims to analyze the axial and transverse dynamic response of a functionally graded nanobeam under a moving constant load. The governing equations are obtained using the Hamilton principle and nonlocal Euler–Bernoulli beam theory. The mechanical properties vary in the thickness direction. The simply supported boundary condition is assumed and using the Laplace transform, the exact solution for the transverse and axial dynamic response is presented. Some examples were used to analyze nonlocal parameters such as power law index of FG materials, aspect ratio and the velocity of a moving constant load and also their influence on axial and transverse dynamic and maximum deflections. By obtaining a good agreement between the presented natural frequencies in this study and previous works, the results of this study are validated.     

A thin-walled composite beam model for light-weighted structures interacting with fluids

A thin-walled beam model is proposed for structures of variable cross-section, which can be either open or closed and includes multicellular cross-sections with either isotropic or orthotropic materials. The proposed model does not require any priori definition of cross-sectional warping which instead results from the solution of the problem. To achieve that a special deformation pattern is superimposed on the bending deformation described by Euler–Bernoulli beam theory. All sectional properties are automatically incorporated in the analysis as a result of the usual variational formulation of the system of equations. The proposed model is specifically designed to simulate the dynamics of wind/hydrokinetic turbine blade with low computational cost, especially in fluid–structure interaction (FSI) simulation. A number of test cases have been carried out to validate the proposed structural model which show good agreement between the results obtained her e and the solutions available in literature. Finally, FSI simulation of a hydrokinetic blade under field condition is carried out to illustrate the capability of the current thin-walled beam model in practice.     

Fractional visco-elastic Euler–Bernoulli beam

Aim of this paper is the response evaluation of fractional visco-elastic Euler–Bernoulli beam under quasi-static and dynamic loads. Starting from the local fractional visco-elastic relationship between axial stress and axial strain, it is shown that bending moment, curvature, shear, and the gradient of curvature involve fractional operators. Solution of particular example problems are studied in detail providing a correct position of mechanical boundary conditions. Moreover, it is shown that, for homogeneous beam both correspondence principles also hold in the case of Euler–Bernoulli beam with fractional constitutive law. Virtual work principle is also derived and applied to some case studies.     

ANCF索梁单元应变耦合问题与模型解耦

索粱结构在土木工程、航空航天等领域有着广泛的应用.在各类索梁动力学建模方法中,由于绝对节点坐标方法(absolute nodal coordinate formulation,ANCF)能够描述柔性体的大变形和大转动问题,因此非常适合大变形索梁结构的动力学建模.对绝对节点坐标索梁单元的应变进行分析可知,弯曲变形会引起单元内部轴向应变的不均匀分布,即单元轴向应变与弯曲应变相互耦合.这种应变耦合效应使单元产生伪应变能,导致单元刚度增大,造成单元失真.分析不同弯曲角下的单元应变及应变能可知,弯曲变形越大,单元失真越严重.通过构造等效一维杆单元重新描述轴向应变,实现了轴向应变与弯曲应变解耦.在此基础上推导广义弹性力,得到了绝对节点坐标索梁单元的应变解耦模型.对解耦前后的两种梁模型进行静力学和动力学仿真,结果表明;解耦模型消除了单元伪应变,相比原模型表现出更好的收敛性和曲率连续性,在相同单元数目下具有更高的精度.同时由于解耦模型降低了单元刚度,因此相比原模型,速度曲线中不再有高频振动.     

变截面Timoshenko梁的单元刚度矩阵

变截面构件在工程中应用广泛,在对变截面梁进行数值计算时,需要建立变截面梁单元的刚度矩阵。该文采用势能驻值原理,考虑了轴力引起的几何非线性和剪切变形的影响,将梁截面刚度的变化率作为小量,得到了近似到二阶的单元刚度矩阵。在构造位移模式时,从梁的微分平衡方程出发,得到同样近似到二阶、分别以三次和五次多项式表示的剪切和弯曲位移模式。该文还证明了单元刚度矩阵的奇异性,给出了轴压刚度的表达式,定量论证了与某些精确解的误差,表明在一定范围内,该文的结果具有足够的精度。最后以一个计算实例说明该文的单元刚度矩阵具有较快的收敛性。     

基于剪切变形的矩形梁剪力滞求解方法

Timoshenko梁通过假设截面的剪切刚度和附加平均剪切转角变形的方式来近似修正初等梁中未考虑剪切变形能的问题,这与梁剪应力沿梁高变化的实际不符。本文基于材料力学剪应力计算式和相应的剪切变形理论,从剪切变形与梁的位移关系入手,导出矩形梁考虑剪切变形时的纵向位移沿梁高方向的函数关系式,证明该位移可分解为纯弯曲引起的位移和剪力引起的剪力滞翘曲位移之和。应用剪力滞广义坐标与广义力的概念,基于能量变分原理得到等截面梁剪力滞控制微分方程组及其通解形式。对均布荷载作用下矩形简支梁的算例分析表明,本文算法与弹性力学精确解对比,两者的应力和挠度剪力滞系数求解结果非常接近,本文算法有足够的精度,且比弹性力学简单。     

Development and implementation of a beam theory model for shape memory polymers

In this paper we focus on the development of a beam theory for a small strain continuum model of thermoviscoelastic shape memory polymers (SMP). Rather than a history integral model that is common for viscoelastic materials, a thermodynamically based state evolution model developed by Ghosh and Srinivasa (2011a) is used as the basis for the beam model based on the Euler–Bernoulli beam theory. An example of a three-point bend test is simulated using the beam theory model. The numerical solution is implemented by using an operator split technique that utilizes an elastic predictor and dissipative corrector. The key idea is that the elastic predictor is based on the solution to a beam theory boundary value problem while the dissipative corrector is entirely local (and hence can be parallelized) and is applied by considering the beam as a two or three dimensional body. This enables a very rapid solution of the problem yet maintaining fidelity of the distribution of inelastic strains across the cross-section. A displacement based convergence criterion is used in each time step. This algorithm is validated by using a three-point bending experiment for three different material cases: elastic, plastic and thermoplastic response. Time step convergence and mesh density convergence studies are carried out for the thermoviscoelastic FEM model. Finally, we implement and study this model for a SMP beam undergoing three-point bending strain recovery and stress recovery thermomechanical loading.     

用切比雪夫多项式研究短梁的弯曲计算

考虑剪切效应,利用切比雪夫多项式构造严格满足表面切应力边界条件的轴向位移表达式,建立了短梁弯曲问题的新理论．利用奇异函数把作用在短梁上的复杂外载荷表示为分布载荷,推导出了短梁弯曲时的截面正应力公式及挠曲线表达式．把采用切比雪夫多项式推导出短梁的弯曲计算公式计算结果与弹性理论计算结果进行比较,可知该方法的计算精度较高．研究结果表明：在复杂外载荷作用下,当长高比小于等于6时,剪切变形对梁的弯曲挠度影响较大,而当长高比小于3时,剪切变形对梁的弯曲应力影响较大;因此建议采用切比雪夫多项式方法给出的挠度表达式、弯曲应力进行计算,因为切比雪夫多项式方法不但给出了复杂外载荷作用下梁截面挠度、弯曲应力的计算通式,而且该方法具有计算过程简便、精度高的优点．     

超静定梁?柱的解析解研究

本文采用渐进积分法研究了超静定梁?柱的弯曲问题. 首先建立超静定梁?柱的四阶挠度微分方程, 考虑到边界条件和连续光滑条件, 采用连续分段独立一体化积分法求解得到了挠度的精确解析解. 为了满足工程设计需要, 构造了超静定梁?柱的四阶挠度微分迭代方程, 选取无轴向力作用时超静定梁的挠曲线作为梁的初函数, 将初函数代入梁的四阶挠度微分迭代方程进行积分, 利用边界条件和连续光滑条件确定积分常数, 得到下一次迭代挠度函数, 依次进行迭代积分运算. 计算出了最大挠度、最大转角和最大弯矩等用轴向力放大系数表示的多项式解析函数解. 本文选取了两种边界条件下受分布力作用的超静定梁?柱进行分析, 计算结果表明, 当超静定梁?柱所受的轴向力小于欧拉临界力的1/2时, 迭代六次误差就可以控制在1%以内; 不仅梁?柱最大位移和最大内力的大小随轴向力的增大而增大, 而且其位置也随轴向力的增大而发生迁移. 本文的研究对揭示轴向力对超静定梁?柱变形和内力的影响有重要意义, 为超静定梁?柱的实际设计提供了一定的理论基础.