• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제12권3호
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• pp.283-295
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• 2001

The postbuckling behaviour of thin plates is an important phenomenon in the design of thin plated structures. In reality plates possess small imperfections and the behaviour of such imperfect plates is of great interest. To numerically study the postbuckling behaviour of imperfect plates explicit incremental or secant matrices have been presented in this paper. These matrices can be used in combination with any thin plate element. The secant matrices are shown to be very accurate in tracing the postbuckling behaviour of thin plates.

• Structural Engineering and Mechanics
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• 제18권1호
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• pp.41-58
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• 2004

The postbuckling behaviour of thin shells has fascinated researchers because the theoretical prediction and their experimental verification are often different. In reality, shell panels possess small imperfections and these can cause large reduction in static buckling strength. This is more relevant in thin laminated composite shells. To study the postbuckling behaviour of thin, imperfect laminated composite shells using finite elements, explicit incremental or secant matrices have been presented in this paper. These incremental matrices which are derived using Marguerre's shallow shell theory can be used in combination with any thin plate/shell finite element (Classical Laminated Plate Theory - CLPT) and can be easily extended to the First Order Shear deformation Theory (FOST). The advantage of the present formulation is that it involves no numerical approximation in forming total potential energy of the shell during large deformations as opposed to earlier approximate formulations published in the literature. The initial imperfection in shells could be modeled by simply adjusting the ordinate of the shell forms. The present formulation is very easy to implement in any existing finite element codes. The secant matrices presented in this paper are shown to be very accurate in tracing the postbuckling behaviour of thin isotropic and laminated composite shells with general initial imperfections.

• Computers and Concrete
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• 제12권1호
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• pp.19-36
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• 2013

In the finite element analysis of reinforced concrete structures, discrete representation of the steel reinforcing bars is considered advantageous over smeared representation because of the more realistic modelling of their bond-slip behaviour. However, there is up to now limited research on how to simulate the dowel action of discrete reinforcing bars, which is an important component of shear transfer in cracked concrete structures. Herein, a numerical model for the dowel action of discrete reinforcing bars is developed. It features derivation of the dowel stiffness based on the beam-on-elastic-foundation theory and direct assemblage of the dowel stiffness matrix into the stiffness matrices of adjoining concrete elements. The dowel action model is incorporated in a nonlinear finite element program based on secant stiffness formulation and application to deep beams tested by others demonstrates that the incorporation of dowel action can improve the accuracy of the finite element analysis.