A FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF DISCONTINUOUS THIN-WALLED-BEAMS CONSIDERING NONUNIFORM SHEAR WARPING DEFORMATION

The general displacement field of thin walled section beams considerin g the uniform and nonuniform shear warping deformation is proposed by using step-by-step application of St Venant's semi-inverse method. For the analysis of the general flexural-torsional response on the unsymm etrical section beams, a C-1-continuous finite element using boundary element contraction technique is formulated and applied. With Pedersen 's idea G. A. Gunnlaugsson and P. T. Pedersen, Comput. Struct. 15, 691 -699 (1982); P. T. Pedersen, J. Ship Res. 35, 254-264, (1991) [1, 2] f or the compatibility condition of the warping discontinuity, it is ver ified that the developed beam model is very effective and useful in ev aluating the additional deflection and stress concentration due to she ar warping even for discontinuously variable section beam problems. (C ) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.