Analysis of tapered steel frames using beam elements and comparison with shell elements

Abstract

peer reviewedThis paper deals with the consequences of modelling a tapered steel frame with beam elements rather than shell elements. It starts by presenting a specific beam element accounting for the tapering that allows performing geometrically as well as materially non-linear analysis. Then, several kinds of analyses are carried out on two different frames and the results obtained using shell elements, tapered beam elements and prismatic beam elements are compared. This comparison shows that the use of tapered elements leads to results in close agreement with those obtained by shell elements, unlike the prismatic ones. The paper aims at showing that resorting to a so-called segmentation technique should be decided carefully. It also intends at showing the accuracy and convenience of tapered elements when compared to shell models: the total number of degrees of freedom is indeed significantly reduced, leading to easier meshing, shorter computation time and easier interpretation of results