Bending Behaviour of Curved Thin-Walled Panels

Curved alignments of highway bridges are often necessary for smooth traffic. Furthermore, architects are increasingly opting to more curves in building as aestheticism is being an important element in most designs. Unlike the case of un-curved structural elements, curvature induces complicated stresses and elements behaviour can be quite different from the behaviour of similar but straight elements. This research aims to develop an analytical procedure to predict the behaviour of curved thin-walled curved beams and develop a formulation that helps design against out-of-plane buckling. The analytical approach considers the nonlinear behaviour and large deformation. An extensive theoretical investigation on large displacement behaviour has been carried out using the principle of minimum total potential energy and compatibility equation. The paper presents the nonlinear equations that describe the elastic behaviour of curved thin walled panel. To verify the proposed equations, out of plane displacements are compared with the results of experimental testing. The proposed equations give a good agreement with the test results.