Numerical study on the mechanical behaviour of hollow-box beams subjected to static loading

Novel types of internally reinforced thin-walled beams are subjected to a feasibility analysis in terms of their effective mechanical behaviour. The novel beams are subjected to bending and torsion uncoupled loadings and are analysed in terms of their stiffness behaviour in static analysis. The models were built using the commercial Finite Element Method (FEM) software ANSYS Mechanical APDL. The feasibility of the models was determined by the comparison of the stiffness behaviour of the novel beams with simple hollow-box beams, having the same mass and dimensions, with the exception of the thickness. An efficiency parameter is used in order to determine the feasibility of the studied geometries. It is found that the novel geometries represent a great improvement under bending loading, better than under torsion loading. Nevertheless, for bending and torsion combined loadings, if bending loads are predominant, the beams can still be interesting for some applications, in particular those with mobile parts.