FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS FOR THIN-WALLED MEMBER SUBJECTED TO COMBINED LOADING

Abstract

Thin-walled structures are widely used in various structural engineering applications due to their advantage of high bearing strength when compared to self-weight and used in a complex loading situation where subjected to combined loadings. When a thin-walled section is subjected to a combined load with restrained torsion, they are ineffective at resisting, resulting in a reduction in beam capacity due to torsion and additional warping stresses. A finite element calculation can be used to analyze a 3D bar of thin-walled structural sections. Different commercial software and studies commonly consider six degrees of freedom at each node of a member for a space frame without considering the effect of warping restraint at the member's ends. This paper presents a finite element calculation for thin-walled sections with restrained torsion using the 14x14 member stiffness matrix, which includes warping as an additional degree of freedom and is commonly used for open thin-walled sections. In this study, we considered two different methods for including the additional degree of freedom for the stiffness matrix, which are very close to each other for small values of characteristics number.