AN EFFICIENT COROTATIONAL BEAM ELEMENT FORMULATION FOR THREE-DIMENSIONAL NON-LINEAR ANALYSIS

摘要

The non-linear analysis of three dimensional beam structures entails transformations involving finite rotations in three dimensions. The requirement of an element for large scale problems involving three dimensional rotations along with material nonlinearity and cross sections of arbitrary shape provided the motivation for the current development. Among the salient features of the proposed beam element is the use of a simple yet accurate rigid body corotational formulation which is valid for any finite rotation of the element. The element is developed in the context of explicit solution strategies since these have shown to be most efficient for problems involving severe non-linearities. In this paper, the formulation and implementation of the proposed element are presented along with applications to demonstrate its performance.