A meshfree approach for the Timoshenko beam

Resumo

Besides the finite element method, there are a number of numerical methods for the analysis of shear de-
formable beams available in the literature, developed to improve the convergence properties and the shear-locking

behaviour exhibited by the finite element method. This paper investigates the application of a meshfree method of
the family of Smoothed Point Interpolation Methods (S-PIM) to the analysis of the Timoshenko beam. Numerical
simulations are also presented, in order to illustrate preliminary results in terms of convergence properties obtained
with a peculiar type of shape function, among the ones of the S-PIM approach.