Joint Structures of Thin-Walled Beams with General Section Shapes

In Chap. 10, we derived joint-matching conditions for a box beam by considering the equilibrium conditions of sectional and edge resultants, which are represented in terms of generalized forces. The principle of virtual work was used to derive the matching conditions in analytic form for the field variables. For a cross-section with a general shape, edge resultants may also be defined by following a procedure similar to that of a box beam. However, it is difficult to establish the matching conditions in analytic form because the relative positions of the matching edges of joining beams can be neither parallel nor intersecting. Furthermore, sectional edges are not always one-to-one matched when beams of different sectional shapes are connected at a joint. Therefore, an alternative method which does not explicitly deal with edge resultants should be developed.