Flexure with shear and associated torsion in prisms of uni-axial and asymmetric cross-sections

Abstract

It is now well over eighty years ago since Barre de Saint-Venant reduced the problem of the beam of constant cross-section under the action of a single transverse load to the search for plane harmonic functions satisfying a certain condition round the boundary of the cross-section. The solutions due to Saint-Venant, which include the rectangular, elliptic and circular cross-sections, are all cases in which the cross-sections have two axes of symmetry at right angles, meeting of necessity in the centroid of the cross-section, and along these axes the single transverse load is resolved. These axes are principal axes, and his solution depends upon this fact. Some less useful solutions exist for the load along one axis of certain beams of such bi-axial symmetry of cross-section, the solutions not yet being known for the load along the perpendicular axis.