Determination of Section Properties of Complicated Structural Members

Abstract

In this paper, section properties, shear coefficient and torsional rigidity of complicated structural members with arbitrarily shape and multiply connected cross section is studied on the basis of theory of elasticity and finite element approach. With additional boundary conditions for the internal boundaries drawn from the continuous conditions of deformation and forces on the boundary, the torsion function and flexure function can be solved numerically from the second boundary-value problem. An improved definition of the shear coefficient is presented on the basis of the analysis of shear stresses distributed at the neutral axis of the cross section. An example is given to demonstrate the validity of the proposed computational approach. At last, the proposed approach is applied to determine the section properties of tower sections of tile Tsing Ma Bridge.