Shear flexible curved spline beam element for static analysis
In this paper, an efficient curved cubic B-spline beam element is developed based on field consistency principle, for the static analysis. The formulation is general in the sense that it includes anisotropy, transverse shear deformation, in-plane and rotary inertia effects. The element is based on laminated beam theory, which satisfies the interface stress and displacement continuity, and has a vanishing shear stress on the top and bottom surfaces of the beam. The lack of consistency in the shear and membrane strain-field interpolations in their constrained physical limits causes poor convergence and unacceptable results due to locking. Hence, numerical experimentation is conducted to check these deficiencies with a series of assumed shear/membrane strain functions, redistributed in a field consistent manner. The performance of the element is assessed by studying the static behavior of a variety of problems ranging from straight beam to circular ring.
static field consistency laminates locking spline element curved beams