Effect of Three-dimensional Warping on Stiffness Constants of Closed Section Composite Beams

This paper focuses on the investigation of three-dimensional (3D) warping effect on the stiffness constants of composite beams with closed section profiles. A finite element (FE) cross-sectional analysis is developed based on the Reissner's multifield variational principle. The 3D in-plane and out-of-plane warping displacements, and sectional stresses are approximated as linear functions of generalized sectional stress resultants at the global level and as FE shape functions at the local sectional level. The classical elastic couplings are taken into account which include transverse shear and Poisson deformation effects. A generalized Timoshenko level $6{\times}6$ stiffness matrix is computed for closed section composite beams with and without warping. The effect of neglecting the 3D warping on stiffness constants is shown to be significant indicating large errors as high as 93.3%.