A General-Purpose Implementation of the Mixed Formulation of the Geometrical Exact Beam Theory

GEBT (Geometrically Exact Beam Theory), a general-purpose tool for nonlinear analysis of composite beams, is developed to meet the design challenges associated with future air vehicles featuring highly-∞exible slender components. GEBT is based on the mixed formulation of the geometric exact beam theory which can capture all geometric nonlinearities due to large de∞ections and rotations, subject to the strains being small. Coupled with VABS, a general-purpose cross-sectional analysis, GEBT can efiectively analyze geometric nonlinear behavior of slender structures having arbitrary cross-sections made of arbitrary materials. In comparison to the original, nonlinear, three-dimensional analysis, the computational cost is signiflcantly reduced without noticeable loss of accuracy.