F.E. Applications for stability analysis of non-symmetric thin-walled curved beams considering shear deformation

In the companion paper, an improved formulation for spatial stability analysis of non-symmetric thin-walled curved beams with shear deformation is presented based on the displacement field considering both constant curvature effects and the second order terms of semitangential rotations. Thus the elastic strain energy and the potential energy due to initial stress resultants are consistently derived. Also closed-from solution for in-plane buckling of curved beams subjected to uniform compression is newly derived for monosymmetric thin-walled curved beams under simply supported boundary conditions. In this paper, F.E. procedures are developed by using the curved beam elements with non-symmetric cross sections. Analytical and numerical solutions for spatial buckling of shear deformable thin-walled circular beams are presented and compared in order to illustrate the accuracy and the reliability of this study. In addition, the extensive parametric studies are performed on spatial stability behavior of curved beams. Particularly trasition and crossover phenomena of buckling mode shapes with change in curvature of beam on buckling for curved beams are investigated.