Numerical analysis of bifurcation buckling for rotationally periodic structures under rotationally periodic loads

By considering the characteristics of deformation of rotationally periodic structures under rotationally periodic loads, the periodic structure is divided into some identical substructures in this study. The degrees-of-freedom (DOFs) of joint nodes between the neighboring substructures are classified as master and slave ones. The stress and strain conditions of the whole structure are obtained by solving the elastic static equations for only one substructure by introducing the displacement constraints between master and slave DOFs. The complex constraint method is used to get the bifurcation buckling load and mode for the whole rotationally periodic structure by solving the eigenvalue problem for only one substructure without introducing any additional approximation. The finite element (FE) formulation of shell element of relative degrees of freedom (SERDF) in the buckling analysis is derived. Different measures of tackling internal degrees of freedom for different kinds of buckling problems and different stages of numerical analysis are presented. Some numerical examples are given to illustrate the high efficiency and validity of this method.