Generalized beam theory-based advanced beam finite elements for linear buckling analyses of perforated thin-walled members

•Beam finite element-based buckling analysis of perforated thin-walled members.•Displacement mode-based beam model allowing for the cross-section discontinuity.•Enhanced approximation of element displacement field by using level-set functions.•Decomposition of any coupled buckled shape to a set of pure buckling modes.•Illustrative examples showing the accuracy and efficiency of the proposed approach. This paper presents a numerically efficient tool for linear buckling predictions of perforated thin-walled bars within the framework of generalized beam theory (GBT). GBT-based beam finite element methods (GBT-FEM) have been well developed for eigenvalue buckling analyses of non-perforated thin-walled bars. The novelty of this paper consists in an extension of the standard GBT to the scope of thin-walled members with arbitrarily shaped and placed holes. This is achieved by combining the standard GBT and the extended finite element method (X-FEM). More specifically, insert a set of locally supported enrichment functions, accounting for the discontinuities on displacement fields arising from the cross-section cut-outs/holes, into the GBT-based finite element approximations of the member configuration spaces, using the partition of unity method (PUM), where a set of level-set functions are used to describe the geometric profiles of hole edges, i.e., with the hole edges being the zero level sets, and also used to construct the enrichment functions. The proposed approach makes it possible to calculate the deformation mode participations for any perforated thin-walled members as the classic GBT for non-perforated ones. Finally, the proposed approach is calibrated against the shell/solid finite element analysis with four illustrative examples. It can be found that the presented approach is of higher computation efficiency than the shell model.