Nonlinear Finite Element Analysis Of Columns

Abstract

In many engineering applications structural components are considered to be beams or columns subjected to a range of external loads such as dead weight, wind, temperature changes etc.In this work a mathematical model has been developed for a sports lighting tower considering it to be a cantilever beam with large deformation. The concept of non-linear P-Delta analysis is applied to the column. Using this model, a tower analysis tool was developed in MATLAB. Using this tool various design alternatives can be examined to evaluate their suitability to a particular task.A number of example problems from the available literature were solved in ANSYS. The MATLAB program developed here is referred to as the NLFC program and it gave the same results as these test cases, and this process was used to evaluate the validity of the tower analysis tool.