Vibration and buckling of thin-Walled structures by a new finite strip

This paper presents the application of a new finite strip to the analysis of folded-plate structures. The displacement function of a flat shell finite strip is made up of two parts, namely, the two in-plane displacement interpolations and the out-of-plane displacement interpolation. Each of the three displacement components is interpolated by a set of computed shape functions in the longitudinal direction and, as usual, one-dimensional shape functions in the transverse direction. Only standard beam shape functions are involved in the longitudinal computed shape functions. When compared with other finite strips, the present finite strip is relatively simple in dealing with boundary and internal support conditions. In addition, the method can be easily implemented by incorporating a standard finite strip program with a continuous-beam program. The computation of the stiffness matrix involves no numerical integration. To verify the accuracy and efficiency of the new finite strip, a few numerical experiments are conducted in which the present finite strip results are compared with those using other finite strips and/or finite elements for the vibration and buckling of folded-plate structures with varying complexity.