Enriched beam finite element models with torsion and shear warping for the analysis of thin-walled structures

This paper presents three beam Finite Element (FE) formulations developed for the analysis of thin-walled structures. These account for out-of-plane cross-section warping by removing the classical rigid body cross-section hypothesis and capture the interaction of axial/bending stress components with shear and torsion. The beam FE models rely on different kinematic assumptions to describe out-of-plane cross-section deformations. Indeed, warping displacement field is interpolated in the element volume according to different approaches, with increasing level of accuracy and detail. First two models adopt a coarse warping description, where warping displacement field is defined as the linear combination of assumed warping profiles and unknown kinematic parameters. In the first model, these are considered as equal to the generalized cross-section torsional curvature and shear strains and a classical displacement-based formulation is adopted to derive the element governing equations. In the second model, warping parameters are assumed as independent kinematic quantities and a mixed approach is considered to derive the FE formulation. Third model, also relying on a mixed formulation, independently interpolates warping by introducing additional degrees of freedom on the cross-section plane, thus, resulting in a richer description of the out-of-plane deformations. This latter is also adopted to propose a numerical procedure for the warping profile evaluation of thin-walled beams subjected to torsional and shear forces, for general cross-section geometry. The efficiency and accuracy of the proposed FE formulations are validated by simulating the response of thin-walled structures under torsion and coupled torsion/shear actions and the influence of the kinematic assumptions characterizing each formulation is discussed.