A two-noded locking-free shear flexible curved beam element

A new two-noded shear ßexible curved beam element which is impervious to membrane and shear locking is proposed herein. The element with three degrees of freedom at each node is based on curvilinear deep shell theory. Starting with a cubic polynomial representation for radial displacement (w), the displacement Þeld for tangential displacement (u) and section rotation (h) are determined by employing force-moment and moment-shear equilibrium equations. This results in polynomial displacement Þeld whose coe¦cients are coupled by generalized degrees of freedom and material and geometric properties of the element. The procedure facilitates quartic polynomial representation for both u and h for curved element conÞgurations, which reduces to linear and quadratic polynomials for u and h, respectively, for straight element conÞguration. These coupled polynomial coe¦cients do not give rise to any spurious constraints even in the extreme thin regimes, in which case, the present element exhibits excellent convergence to the classical thin beam solutions. This simple C0 element is validated for beam having straight/curved geometries over a wide range of slenderness ratios. The results indicates that performance of the element is much superior to other elements of the same class. Copyright