Fully Stressed Piles and Beams in a Winkler’s Medium, End-loaded by an Orthogonal Force, and with Optimum Length

FENU, LUIGI

2010-01-01

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Abstract

A simplified method of designing fully stressed beams with optimum length in a Winkler’s medium, laterally loaded at the top and without any point constraint, is proposed. A numerical algorithm distributing the mass by means of the Fully Stressed Design (FSD) method and updating the moment with finite elements has been first implemented. The use of the FSD method is in general quite simple, and allows to obtain optimum, or close to the optimum, solutions. After having distributed the mass along the pile through the FSD method, the beam length has been finally optimised by means of a heuristic procedure.