An effective corotational formulation to finite rotation - small strain description of Timoshenko beam elemants

In the context of three-dimensional elastic frame structures analysis with small strains and in the presence of large rotations we present a computationally effective model for the Timoshenko beam element. Actually the kinematical and strain measures of the beam element are completely defined by referring only to boundary nodal displacements and one finite rotation parameter. The description of the finite three-dimensional rotations is well posed under widely applicable hypotheses and all used variables are additive in the incremental solution procedures. Analyses of complex spatial dome structures have been carried out to validate the developed technique.