Interactive Analysis of General Beam Configurations using Finite Element Methods and JavaScript

Abstract

Advancements in computer technology have contributed to the widespread practice of modelling and solving engineering problems through the use of specialized software. The wide use of engineering software comes with the disadvantage to the user of costs from the required purchase of software licenses. The creation of accurate, trusted, and freely available applications capable of conducting meaningful analysis of engineering problems is a way to mitigate to the costs associated with every-day engineering computations. Writing applications in the JavaScript programming language allows the applications to run within any computer browser, without the need to install specialized software, since all internet browsers are equipped with virtual machines (VM) that allow the browsers to execute JavaScript code. The objective of this work is the development of an application that performs the analysis of a completely general beam through use of the finite element method. The app is written in JavaScript and embedded in a web page so it can be downloaded and executed by a user with an internet connection. This application allows the user to analyze any uniform or non-uniform beam, with any combination of applied forces, moments, distributed loads, and boundary conditions. Outputs for this application include lists the beam deformations and slopes, as well as lateral and slope deformation graphs, bending stress distributions, and shear and a moment diagrams. To validate the methodology of the GBeam finite element app, its results are verified using the results from obtained from two other established finite element solvers for fifteen separate test cases.