CVBEM solution for De Saint-Venant orthotropic beams under coupled bending and torsion

The aim of this paper is to provide a solution for the coupled flexure–torsion De Saint Venant problem for orthotropic beams taking full advantage of the complex variable boundary element method (CVBEM) properly extended using a complex potential function whose real and imaginary parts are related to the shear stress components, the orthotropic ratio and the Poisson coefficients. The proposed method returns the complete stress field and the unitary twist rotation of the cross section at once by performing only line integrals. Numerical applications have been reported to show the validity and the efficiency of the proposed modified CVBEM to handle shear stress problems in the presence of orthotropic materials.