Looping behavior of arches using corotational finite element

Abstract

Buckling of arches is studied using a corotational finite element model in conjunction with a modified Riks-Wempner technique. The corotational formulation allows for separation of rigid body displacements from deformation displacements of the element. The program can equally be applied to rigid or prestressed arches, as it takes into account the sequential fabrication of stressed (i.e. prebuckled) arches. Looping paths tracing nonlinear response of arches have been successfully obtained for several cases, including rigid and prestressed elastica arches with both symmetric and asymmetric modes of buckling. Comparisons are made with the results for prestressed arches using shooting method, and with the benchmark results for various rigid arches using discrete element method. When compared to a discrete element technique, the present method appears to be more cost-effective, as a finite element mesh with 60% fewer elements can result in virtually the same degree of accuracy.