Development of a rigid-ended beam element for analysis of bracketed frame structures

At the initial design stage, for rapid evaluation of strength of ship structures, finite element analysis using beam elements is carried out as a rule. In beam modeling of ship structures, brackets are usually represented by rigid elements to simplify the analysis. The extent of rigid ends, which is called the span point, can be determined from the three kinds of view points, i.e., bending, shearing and axial deformation.

In this paper, a novel beam element is developed. The developed novel beam element, referred to as the rigid-ended beam element, can consider the effect of three kinds of span point within one element, which was impossible in modeling with the ordinary beam element. Calculated results agree with the exact solution for a cantilever beam and also with results obtained from finite element analysis using membrane elements. Structural analysis using the rigid-ended beam element is revealed to have good computing efficiency due to the elements not needing to correspond to the brackets.