Large deflections of non-prismatic nonlinearly elastic cantilever beams subjected to non-uniform continuous load and a concentrated load at the free end

Abstract

This work studies large deflections of slen- der, non-prismatic cantilever beams subjected to a combined loading which consists of a non-uniformly distributed con- tinuous load and a concentrated load at the free end of the beam. The material of the cantilever is assumed to be non- linearly elastic. Different nonlinear relations between stress and strain in tensile and compressive domain are considered. The accuracy of numerical solutions is evaluated by com- paring them with results from previous studies and with a laboratory experiment.