A FINITE ELEMENT CODE FOR TORSIONAL ANALYSES USING PRANDTL STRESS FUNCTIONS

Paranjothy Sai Sudharsanan

VERIFICATION AND VALIDATION
UNIT CIRCLE:
For a unit circle with G=0.1 , analytical solution gives the value of torsional rigidity multiplier as
1.5707.Analytical solution for Prandtl function (Phi) is of the form -0.05(x
2
+y
2
-1). The value of Phi has
been calculated at the centre to be 0.05 and referenced for solution convergence. The maximum
difference between the Phi through FEM and Analytical solution were incorporated as a part of the code
for the entire domain. K and Maximum of Phi-Difference values for different densities of meshes and
difference between FEM Solution and Analytical solution are presented in Table1.
Number of Elements
K-
Analytical K-FEM Difference
Max phi-
Difference
71 Elements 1.5707 1.5104 0.0603 0.0006
130 Elements 1.5707 1.5392 0.0315 0.0003
204 Elements 1.5707 1.5501 0.0206 0.0001
Table-1

Fig.1 Fig.2
The Shear stress in xz direction is analytically computed to be -0.1y and yz direction is 0.1x. Substituting
G as 1, shear stress and strains become equal in the respective directions. The analytical solutions are of
the form
xz
=-0.1y and
yz
=0.1x using the following relations

Phi and shear stress plots for mesh density of 204 elements have been shown in figure 3 through figure 5.
For y=1 and x=-1,
xz
and
yz
are computed to be -.0941 and -.092 respectively. The slight discrepancy in
values are due to the computation of stress at quadrature points and then extrapolating them to nodal
values.

0
0.02
0.04
0.06
0.08
1 2 3
Difference
0
0.0002
0.0004
0.0006
0.0008
1 2 3
Difference

Fig.3 Phi Fig.4
xz
Fig.5
yz

ELLIPSE:
The value of total torque for the elliptical cross section can be computed as 0.031426 and the
value of K from torque as 0.31426 assuming G=0.1. The following relations were used

1 = (0)(
o
2
b
2
o
2
+ b
2
) _
x
2
o
2
+
y
2
b
2
1_
a=1 and b=0.5 and integrated over the domain.
FEM solutions predict a value of 0.3120 for a mesh density of 412 elements, which seems fairly accurate.
Plots for Phi and shear stresses have been shown in figure 6 through figure 8.

Fig.6 Phi Fig.7
xz
Fig.8
yz

EQUILATERAL TRIANGLE:
Using the same relations as above for torque and K, but by replacing the
Phi by Prandtl stress function for an equilateral triangle, the torque was computed to be 0.002165.K was
obtained from torque as 0.02165.
1 = _0
S

_(x

2S
) _
x
S

S
+ y] _
x
S
+

S
+ y]

FEM solutions predict a value of 0.0213 for a mesh density of 99 elements. The plots have been shown
in figure 9 through 11.

Fig.9 Phi Fig.10
xz
Fig.11
yz

SQUARE:
The torsional rigidity factor for the square rod was calculated using the series for K. The value
of the series did not show much variation when the number of terms were increased, it remained the same
until the fourth decimal. Comparison of rigidity multipliers for three different mesh densities have been
shown in table-2. Plots of Prandtl stress functions and shear stresses for the square section have been
shown from figure 12 through figure 14.

Number of Elements
No. of K
terms
K-Analytical
K-FEM Difference
6 Elements
3
0.14059 0.1348 0.0058
8 Elements
4
0.14058 0.1373 0.0033
10 Elements
5
0.14057 0.1385 0.0021
Table-1

Fig.12 Phi Fig.13
xz
Fig.14
yz




Fig.15 Convergence of FEM Solution to Analytical Solution
DESCRIPTION OF THE CODE:
The code takes input of the nodal positions and connectivity from the
ABAQUS file through readinp and readinp2 functions respectively. The elemental and system degree of
freedom are computed and local and global stiffness and force matrices are initiated. The nodes where
essential boundary conditions are applied are manually fed in bound_dof matrix and their respective
values are set to zero through the bound_val matrix. Stiffness and Force matrices are computed in a
series of for loops, where the first for loop stands for the total number of elements, the second for total
number of nodes in an element, the next two are for gauss integration. Aforementioned computation is in
accordance with the matrix system of equations derived earlier through the weak form.
The constraints function sets the Phi as zero on the boundary nodes and particular stiffness term
related to that node is set as one. Phi, the Prandtl stress function obtained as a solution from solving
global system of equations Phi = Kg\F. It is then used in the postprocessing part of the code and element
stresses and torque are calculated. The torsional rigidity multiplier kr is in turn computed from the total
torque.
A similar procedure is carried out with a series of loops effecting summation of terms per element
and global assembly which is controlled by the index file. The stresses are computed at the quadrature
points since they are discontinuous at the nodes and signs are set in accordance with the relation between
shear stresses and Prandtl function. A global stress matrix,stress_gausspoint is then assembled for their
corresponding global quadrature points. A uniform grid txi and txy are then formed and meshed. The
stresses are then plotted to uniform mesh to give an approximate estimation of the nodal stress values
through griddata command.
Salient features of the program is that it could be converted to a two degree of freedom system a few
modifications since the shape functions and their derivatives are arranged in a matrix through indices.
The program is also enabled to compute the time it takes to compute the solutions and write the output
plots to a .pdf file. To solve a elliptic cross section with 412 twelve elements, the program takes 15
seconds on an average.
REFERENCES:
The Finite Element Method using MATLAB, Young W. Kwon and Hyochoong Bang