Efficient strong Unified Formulation for stress analysis of non-prismatic beam structures

The Unified Formulation (UF) has gained attention as a powerful tool for efficient design of structural components. Due to the inherent flexibility its kinematics representation, arbitrary shape functions can be selected in different dimensions achieve high-fidelity characterisation response under load. Despite this merit, classical isoparametric description UF limits application prismatic structures. weak-form anisoparametric approach adopted overcome limitation recent work by Patni et al. proves versatile yet computationally challenging owing expensive computation stiffness matrix means full volume integrals. We propose strong-form (SUF) based on Serendipity Lagrange Expansion (SLE) cross-sectional finite element and differential quadrature beam element. main objective SUF is an restricting Gauss operations variable cross-sections non-prismatic structures discrete sense, thus eliminating need When assessed against UF, ABAQUS FE analytical solutions, static analysis beam-like loads shown accurate, numerically stable, more than state-of-the-art methods.