Effects of temperature on aquatic insect growth, survival and infectious disease

Oral presentation at the Ecological Society of Australia annual meeting, Darwin, November 202

Generalised beam theory (GBT) for stiffened sections

This paper outlines the use of the Generalised Beam Theory (GBT) approach to study the structural behaviour of prismatic thin-walled members with stiffeners of arbitrary geometries. This is particular relevant for bridge applications, where the stiffeners' arrangements are usually optimized in the design. The proposed GBT procedure is expressed in the spirit of Kantorovich's semi-variational method, using the dynamic modes of an unconstrained planar frame as the in-plane conventional deformation modes. The corresponding warping deformations are then evaluated from the post-processing of these in-plane modes, thus reversing the strategy of the classical GBT procedure. Constraint conditions are applied to the stiffened plate elements to provide the rigidity exhibited by the specified stiffeners. The method used is applicable to open, closed and partially closed cross-sections. The efficiency and ease of use of the method are outlined by means of two examples, aimed to describe the linear-elastic behaviour of thin-walled members. The numerical results obtained with the proposed approach are validated against those calculated with a shell finite element model developed in Abaqus

Partial interaction analysis of multi-component members within the GBT

This paper presents a novel approach that describes the first-order (linear elastic) partial interaction analysis of members formed by multi-components based on the Generalised Beam Theory (GBT). The novelty relies on its ability to accurately model the partial interaction between the different components forming the cross-section in both longitudinal and transverse directions as well as to consider the cross-sectional deformability. The GBT deformations modes, that consist of the conventional, extensional and shear modes, are determined from the dynamic analyses of the cross-section represented by a planar frame. The partial interaction is specified at each connection interface between two adjacent elements by means of a shear deformable spring distributed along the length of the member. The ease of use of the model is outlined by an application performed on a multi-component member subjected to an eccentric load. The values calculated with an ABAQUS finite element model are used to validate the proposed method. The results of the numerical applications outline the influence of specifying different rigidities for the interface shear connection and in using different order of polynomials for the shape functions specified in the finite element cross-section analysis