A Component-Wise Approach in Structural Analysis

Abstract

The present work presents an innovative component-wise (CW) approach which can be employed for the structural analysis of multicomponent structures in mechanical and civil engineering. CW is based on the Carrera unified formulation (CUF) for structural models. In particular, the one-dimensional CUF models were exploited in this work. In the CUF framework, refined models are hierarchically obtained by considering arbitrary expansion orders of the problem unknowns. The one-dimensional CUF models, for instance, are based on higher-order displacement fields above the structure cross-section. The one-dimensional CUF has been recently developed, different classes of models are available and, in this work, Taylor-like (TE) [1] and Lagrange-like (LE) [2] elements were adopted. The main features of one-dimensional CUF can be summarized as follows: (1.) Results from the one-dimensional CUF have the same accuracy as those from shell and solid finite elements for many structural problems such as thin-walled structures and composites; (2.) The computational costs of the one-dimensional CUF are considerably lower than those of shell and solid finite element models.