Curved Cantilever Beam Under Point Force

Curved Cantilever Beam

The curved cantilever in Figure 1{reference-type=“ref” reference=“fig:bathe”} was first studied by [@bathe1979large], and has become a staple in the literature on geometrically nonlinear rods. This example is selected to demonstrate the path-independence of the Init interpolation. The undeformed centerline of the cantilever follows a $45^\circ$ arc with radius $R$ given by:

$$\boldsymbol{x}_0(\xi) = R \sin \xi \frac{\pi}{4L}\, \mathbf{E}_1 + R \left(1 - \cos \xi \frac{\pi}{4L}\right)\, \mathbf{E}_3.$$

A point load $\boldsymbol{F} = 600 \, \mathbf{E}_2$ is applied at the tip, i.e. at $\xi = R$. There is no closed-form solution to the problem, and it is customary to present the final displacements at the tip:

$$\Delta x_i \triangleq \mathbf{E}_i \cdot \left(\boldsymbol{x}(L) - \boldsymbol{x}_0(L)\right).$$

The following parameters are used for the simulations:

$$\begin{array}{lr} % Hockling R =& 100 \\ % ,& A &= 10 \\ E =& 1000 \\ % ,& I &= 0.0833 \\ G =& 500 \\ % ,& J &= 2.16 \\ \end{array} \qquad\qquad \begin{array}{ll} % Hockling A =& 10^4 \\ I =& 10^4/12 \\ J =& 10^4/6 \\ \end{array}$$

The analysis uses a discretization with 8 linear (2-node) elements. The analysis is performed twice for each formulation under consideration, first with 8 equal load increments and then with 10. The results are presented in Table \[tab:bathe\]{reference-type=“ref” reference=“tab:bathe”}. Only the formulations with the Init interpolation produce the same tip displacement in both load cases, indicating an artificial path dependence for all other variants.

Deformed shape of curved cantilever by
[@bathe1979large].{#fig:bathe width=“60%”}