Thin-Walled Finite Element for Curved Multicell Box Girders

The generalized Vlasov's thin-walled beam theory was combined with the finite element technique to develop a new curved thin-walled multicell box girder finite element which can model extension, flexure, torsion, torsional warping, distortion, distortional warping and shear lag effects. For multicell box girders, several distortional modes are introduced to describe the complete distortional behavior of the cross-section. The element is one dimensional, it has three nodes and employs the conventional polynomial shape functions. For modeling flexure, Timoshenko's beam theory is used to take account of shear deformations.