Analysis of composite beams with partial shear interaction using available modelling techniques: A comparative study

This paper presents a comparison of available numerical structural analysis formulations for composite beams with partial shear interaction, which include the finite difference method, the finite element method, the direct stiffness method and the exact analytical model, and these formulations are briefly presented. The first two of these formulations lead to a numerical solution that requires a spatial discretisation to be implemented, while the direct stiffness method does not require this discretisation. Using the solution of the exact analytical model as a benchmark reference, the accuracy of the three numerical techniques is tested for the cases of a simply supported beam and a propped cantilever, and a qualitative comparison is carried out to highlight the adequacy and characteristics of these numerical formulations. For the two structural systems considered, the minimum spatial discretisations that need to be adopted to keep the error within an acceptable tolerance are provided for each of the formulations.