Increasing Stiffness of Constructions through Application of Enhancing Elements

Abstract

Presented in this work is a study on construction stiffness, based on examination of their neutral lines for various cross-section geometries and different force magnitudes. Investigations were conducted both through numerical simulations and experimentally. The results of numerical simulations indicate that stiffness enhancement reduces deflection in the range of 41-52 %, while the experimental tests showed the reduction of 42-54 %. Also reviewed is comparative analysis between the stiffness results obtained by numerical analyses and experiments, which showed high degree of their compliance. The deviations between the results offered by the two methods are 1-3 %, on average, while in the worst case, which occurs in just a couple of points, the deviation equals 10 %. This study revealed significant increase of element stiffness, which was obtained by employment of additional stiffness enhancing elements.

Keywords

• enhancing element
• stiffness