Thin walled beams
A thin walled beam is a very useful type of beam. The cross section of thin walled beams is made up from thin panels connected among themselves to create closed or open cross sections of a beam. Typical closed sections include round, square, and rectangular tubes. Open sections include I-beams, T-beams, L-beams, and so on. Thin walled beams exist because their bending stiffness per unit cross sectional area is much higher than that for solid cross sections such a rod or bar. In this way, stiff beams can be achieved with minimum weight. Thin walled beams are particularly useful when the material is a composite laminate. For metallic structures, the theory is fully developed. Pioneer work on composite laminates thin walled beams was done by Librescu.
