Analysis of Thin-Walled Closed Beams With General Quadrilateral Cross Sections

Abstract

This paper deals with the one-dimensional static and dynamic analysis of thin-walled closed beams with general quadrilateral cross sections. The coupled deformations of distortion as well as torsion and warping are investigated in this work. A new approach to determine the functions describing section deformations is proposed. In particular, the present distortion function satisfies all the necessary continuity conditions unlike Vlasov's distortion function. Based on these section deformation functions, a one-dimensional theory dealing with the coupled deformations is presented. The actual numerical work is carried out using two-node C0 finite element formulation. The present one-dimensional results for some static and free-vibration problems are compared with the existing and the plate finite element results.