| Abstract: | A new finite element procedure for the static analysis of beam thin-walled structures of open or closed cross-section is presented. The method is a combined or mixed one, based on the superposition of beam and shell strains and displacements. An essential part of this work is the development of new shape functions (which are either ‘exact’, or polynomial) for the interpolation of the shell displacements.The above method is applied to the thin-walled curved pipe problem and compared to the von Karman approach. Excellent results are obtained, as well as a drastic reduction of the total number of nodal variables. |
