An efficient formulation for thin-walled beams curved in plan

An efficient formulation is developed for the elastic analysis of thin-walled beams curved in plan. Using a second-order rotation tensor, the strain values of the deformed configuration are calculated in terms of the displacement values and the initial curvature by adopting the right extensional strain measure. The principle of virtual work is then used to obtain the nonlinear equilibrium equations, based on which a finite element beam formulation is developed. The accuracy of the method is confirmed through comparison with test results, shell finite element formulations and other curved beam formulations from the literature. It is also shown that the results of the developed formulation are very accurate for the cases where initial curvature is large.