Finite Bending of Curved Beam with Thin Wall Cross Section

Abstract

It is well known that a curved beam with a thin wall subjected to bending moment, has its bending stiffness reduced due to a flattening of its cross section, until local buckling occurs at last. Restricted cases, for example, circular tubes had been treated by the analytical method. Present paper gives a convenient representation for the stiffness matrix of finite element in order to analyze the finite bending of a thin walled curved beam with arbitrary cross section. Here the buckling of a circular tube is examined and compared with the proposed simplified solutions, and several representative cases are computed.