This book presents the theory of plates and shells on the basis of the three-dimensional parent theory. The authors explore the thinness of the structure to represent the mechanics of the actual thin three-dimensional body under consideration by a more tractable two-dimensional theory associated with an interior surface. In this way, the relatively complex three-dimensional continuum mechanics of the thin body is replaced by a far more tractable two-dimensional theory. To ensure that the resulting model is predictive, it is necessary to compensate for this ‘dimension reduction’ by...

This book presents a comprehensive introduction to an advanced beam theory applicable to thin-walled beams of rectangular and arbitrarily-shaped cross-sections. Furthermore, it describes a unique beam-based approach to handling joint structures consisting of thin-walled beams, compiled here for the first time.This higher-order beam theory (HoBT), developed by the authors over the past two decades, uses more than six degrees of freedom (DOFs) in contrast to the classical theories, which use only six DOFs. The additional degrees of freedom describe sectional deformations such as warping and...

This monograph details spatial and material vistas on non-linear continuum mechanics in a dissipation-consistent approach. Thereby, the spatial vista renders the common approach to nonlinear continuum mechanics and corresponding spatial forces, whereas the material vista elaborates on configurational mechanics and corresponding material or rather configurational forces. Fundamental to configurational mechanics is the concept of force. In analytical mechanics, force is a derived object that is power conjugate to changes of generalised coordinates. For a continuum body, these are typically the...