FUNDAMENTAL CLOSED-FORM SOLUTIONS FOR SOLID AND THIN-WALLED COMPOSITEBEAMS INCLUDING A COMPLETE OUT-OF-PLANE WARPING MODEL

A model for predicting the structural behavior of composite beams is p resented. The model includes a three-dimensional warping distribution and is designed to handle arbitrary solid cross-sections or general th in-walled geometries. The formulation enables the derivation of fundam ental strength-of-materials type closed-form analytic solutions for va rious basic composite beam configurations and loading modes. These fun damental solutions explicitly identify the origin of the elastic coupl ings and supply educating insight into the structural mechanisms in co mposite beams. In addition, the detailed distributions of the out-of-p lane warping provided by the present analytic solutions For relatively simple geometries may be used as the basic shear deformation shape fu nctions in numerical analyses of more complex configurations. (C) 1998 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.