Improved Strategy of Two-Node Curved Beam Element Based on the Same Beam’s Nodes Information

Abstract

The curved beam with a great initial curvature is the typical structure and applied widely in real engineering structures. The common practice in the current literature employs two-node straight beam elements as the elementary members for stress and displacement analysis, which needs a large number of divisions to fit the curved beam shape well and increases computational time greatly. In this paper, we develop an improved accurate two-node curved beam element (IC2) in 3D problems, combining the curved Timoshenko beam theory and the curvature information calculated from the same beam curve. The strategy of calculating the curvature information from the same bean curve in the IC2 beam element and then transferring the curvature information to the two-node straight beam element can greatly enhance the accuracy of the mechanical analysis with no extra calculation burden. We then introduce the finite element implementation of the IC2 beam element and verify by the complex curved beam analysis. By comparison with simulation results from the straight two-node beam element in the MIDAS (S2-MIDAS) and the three-node curved beam element adopted in the ANSYS (C3-ANSYS), the simulation results of the typical quarter arc examples under constant or variable curvature show that the IC2 beam element based on curved beam theory is a combination of efficiency and accuracy. And, it is a good choice for analysis of complex engineering rod structure with large initial curvature.