A review of the finite strip method

Y K Cheung and L G Tham

University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
Summary
The first paper on finite strip analysis of structures
was published by Cheung in the late 1960s. Since
then, many more papers have been published and
they have demonstrated that the finite strip method
has higher efficiency than the finite element method
as a smaller number of degrees of freedom are
involved in the solution. As a recently published
book by Cheung and Tham has reported
a comprehensive reviewon papers published before
996, the present article will focus mainly on the
publications in the past three years but references
are also made to some key papers published earlier.
Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2: 369d375
The finite strip method was devised for structural
analysis in the late 1960s. It was applied to various
types of structures such as plates, shells, box girder
bridges and tall buildings, etc. The displacements of
a conventional strip are described by functions which
are given as products of trigonometrical/hyperbolic
series and polynomials. The series have to satisfy
a priori boundary conditions at the end of the strips.
For a simply supported plate, it can be shown readily
that a sine series should be chosen. In the early 1980s,
the spline finite strips, which used B-3 spline series for
interpolation, were also proposed. The spline series
satisfy the continuity requirements and they can be
easily modified to satisfy various boundary
conditions. Other developments allowed other series,
such as exponential series and computed shape
functions, to be employed as well. Hankel and Laplace
transforms were also used to analyse geotechnical
problems.
As a comprehensive review on the contributions
before 1996 can be found in Ref.[1], the present article
will focus on the post-1995 publications grouped
under the following headings:
1. Developments of various types of strips.
2. Implementation of finite strip in parallel
programming environment.
3. Applications in vibration and stability analyses.
Developments of various types of strips
Cocchi[2] had employed the series of
trigonometrical/hyperbolic functions for the
description of the displacements to analyse plates with
various support conditions. He demonstrated that the
orthogonality conditions were satisfied not only for
simply supported case but also for other support
conditions, and therefore, the characteristic matrices
would be uncoupled. As a result, the computation
efficiency was greatly improved.
Gagnon et al.[3] used spline finite strip to analyse
rectangular plates. They employed various order
spline function (linear, quadratic and cubic) for the
interpolation in the longitudinal direction and
comparison of their efficiency was carried out.
Kong et al[4] tried to improve the convergence by
replacing the polynomial components of the shape
functions by natural shape functions which were
obtained by solving the fourth-order differential
equation describing the bending action in the
transverse direction. Taking a simply supported strip
as an example, it was shown readily that the
interpolation functions in the transverse direction
(x-direction) can be written as
X
m
(x)"a
1m
cosh
m
x#a
2m
sinh
m
x
#a
3m
x cosh
m
x#a
4m
x sinh
m
x (1)
where
m
"mt/L(L"length of the strip). a
1m
, a
2m
,
a
3m
and a
4m
are undetermined coefficients.
Having the shape functions determined, the
solution process was conducted in the usual manner.
Such strips can overcome a number of difficulties
encountered in the standard strips. These difficulties
include rigid body modes, constant strains, spurious
zero-energy modes, etc.
Applying the U-transformation, Li et al[5] were able
to uncouple the equations of the finite strips so that the
problem of the whole structure can be simplified into
an equivalent problem of single strip.
369
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375
Fig. 1 Typical isoparametric spline strips [11]
Zhong et al[6] subdivided each strip into a number of
intervals and carried out precise integration to
generate the shape functions. The approach is based
on the method of matrix exponentiation and theory of
structural mechanics optimal control. The method was
proven to improve the accuracy in modelling the
effects of the supports and point loads.
Another approach to improve the convergence and
accuracy is to include augmented functions in
addition to the usual shape functions. Such
augmented functions can be applied to the shape
functions in either the longitudinal or transverse
directions.
In treating shear walls/plates the thickness of which
changed in stepwise manner, Cheung et al[13]
augmented the trigonometrical/hyperbolic series by
a piecewise continuous functions so that the required
continuity at locations of abrupt changes of thickness
could be taken care. The augmenting functions were
piecewise linear polynomials for plane stress strip
whereas it was necessary to use piecewise cubic
polynomials to achieve the C
1
continuity as required in
the bending strip. The continuity and equilibrium
requirements at the junctions where there were abrupt
changes in thickness are taken into account in
determining the coefficients for the polynomials. For
example, the conditions to be applied in the case of
a bending strip were the continuities of the bending
moment and shear force at each junction level.
Applications of the augment strips in static, vibration
as well as stability analyses of plates and shear walls
were documented in Refs[7,8]. The examples quoted
fully demonstrated the improvements in accuracy as
well as rate of convergence that one could achieve by
incorporating the augmenting functions.
On the other hand, Azhari & Bradford[9] used
bubble functions as the augmented functions in their
study on the local buckling of plate structures. In
addition to the cubic polynomial shape functions for
interpolation of the deflection in the transverse
direction (x-axis), the following bubble functions were
introduced.
Z
s
"
A
2
2n
(1#])
n
(1!])
n
, n"2, 3
2
(2)
where ]"2x/b. b is the width of the strip and A is
a multiplier.
It was shown that the fourth-order bubble function
had a major effect on the accuracy of the method, and
therefore, it was recommended that the deflection for
a bubble strip should be expressed as
w" _
n

1, 2,
2
, r
1 f
b
(])2+d
fn
,Y
n
(3)
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS AND CAD 370
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375
Fig. 2 Parallel programming schemes: (a) masterdslave scheme; (b) multi masterdslave scheme
where
1 f
b
(])2"

b
8
(1!])
2
(1#]);
1
4
(1!])
2
(2#]);
!
b
8
(1!])(1#])
2
;
1
4
(1#])
2
(2!]);
1
2
4
(1#])
2
(1!])
2

Y
n
is the interpolation functions in the y-direction. +d
fn
,
denotes the deflection vector.
For structures having non-rectangular geometry, it
is possible to carry out geometric mapping by
isoparametric transformation and spline finite strips
can then be used in the transformed coordinate
system. The transformation can be carried out for the
whole structure before it is discretised into a number
of strips[10]. The approach can be made more flexible if
the structure was discretised into a number of
substructures[11,12] (Fig. 1) and the geometric
transformation was carried out for each substructure.
Each substructure was then modelled as an
assemblage of spline strips. Compatibility between
adjacent substructures was ensured by forcing
displacements and rotations at the connecting knots to
be equal.
Implementation of finite strip in parallel
programming environment
It is noted that the structure of the finite strip
programme is very suitable for the parallel processing,
and therefore, attempts to parallelize the finite strip
programme in shared-memory machines were made
by Puckett & Schmidt[13] as well as Chen & He[14] ,
Chen[15], and Chen & Byreddy[16] implemented
parallelisation for the finite strip programme on
a network of SUN work stations interconnected by
the ethernet. Two parallisation strategies were
proposed.
MASTER`SLAVE SCHEME
Such scheme consists of a master processor and
a number of slave processors (Fig. 2a). The master
processor is responsible for the creation of the slave
processors; reading of the input data; broadcasting of
the data to all slaves using the broadcast commands
and computation of the final results from the
computed results of each slave processor. The slave
processors are responsible for processing of the
assigned tasks and sending back the computed results
to the master.
MULTI MASTER`SLAVE SCHEME
This scheme has a tree-like structure (Fig. 2b). The
processor at the root and the leaves are referred to as
the root and leaf processors, respectively. Processors
in between the root and leaves are called the
intermediate processors. Each intermediate processor
serve as the master of the slave processors that it
created and the slave of the master that created it.
Information is communicated between master and
slave processors at each level. Such scheme is very
flexible and can optimise the usage of the processors.
Cheung and Tham[1] also implemented a finite strip
programme for the analysis of box girder in the
FINITE STRIP METHOD 371
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375
Fig. 3 Flow chart for the finite strip programme for box girder
analysis
Fig. 4 Modes shapes for a corner point supported spherical shell [12]
parallel programming environment of the IBM
Scalable POWER parallel SP2 system. The programme
is based on the master-slave scheme. The flow chart of
the programme is as given in Fig. 3 and the listing
of the programmes can be found in Ref.[1]. After
reading the input data, the master processor
broadcasts the information to the slave processors.
Each slave processor forms the stiffness matrix [K] as
well as the load vector +F, for the assigned number of
terms and solves the equilibrium equation
(EQUILEQ). The results thus obtained are transmitted
back to the master processor for the calculation of the
stresses and displacements.
Applications
Hu[17] studied the convergence of the finite strip
method for higher modes of vibration of cylindrical
honeycomb panels with respect to the strip division
and support conditions. He reported that the finite
strip results included one extra mode than those
predicted by the analytical solutions. It is very likely
that these spurious modes are due to the integration
schemes adopted and they may be eliminated by
employing selective integration in forming the
characteristic matrices.
The isoparametric spline strips were applied to
study the free vibration behaviour of various types of
shell by Au et al[12]. Fig. 4 shows the mode shapes for
a spherical shell of square planform (width of the
planform is a). The shell is supported at four corners.
Other pertinent dimensions are as follows:
a/R"0.2; a/t"100, where R and t are the radius
and thickness of the shell, respectively. The Poissons
ratio (v) is 0.3.
The fundamental frequencies for a simply
supported bi-directionally stepped square plates were
computed by using the augmented shape functions.
Table 1 tabulates the frequency coefficients
|
1
(u
1
"(|
1
/4a
2
)(D
1
/h
1
, where u
1
is the
fundamental angular frequency, is the density and
D
1
is the flexural rigidity for two different
discretisation schemes:
1. Scheme 1: three strips, that is one central strip
through the thickened section and two side strips of
constant thickness. One term is used for the
trigonometrical series.
STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS AND CAD 372
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375
Table 1 Frequency coefficient for stepped square plate
h
2
/h
1
Scheme 1 Scheme 2
.........................................................................................................................
0.70 15.560 15.477
0.75 16.309 16.189
0.80 17.024 16.917
0.85 17.715 17.635
0.90 18.410 18.361
0.95 19.091 19.051
.........................................................................................................................
Table 2 Buckling coefficient of flat plates [22]
Length/thickness 0.728 0.79 0.889
.........................................................................................................................
Buckling coefficient (two bubble
strips) 5.47 5.41 5.50
.........................................................................................................................
Buckling coefficient [26] 5.47 5.41 5.51
.........................................................................................................................
Fig. 5 Effect of hydrostatic pressure on the post-buckling
relations between P and o [31]
2. Scheme 2: eight strips of three equal width and
three terms for the trigonometrical series.
The results tabulated in Table 1 indicate that the
convergence is very fast.
In the late 1970s, the conventional finite strip
method was also applied to analyse buckling
problems. The applications of the finite strip method
to buckling analysis were attempted by Delcourt[18] as
well as Plank & Wittrick[19]. Examples of buckling of
plates and folded plate structures were reported and
the success of the work had laid the foundation for the
development of the finite strip method in non-linear
analyses.
Asequel of papers were later published by Bradford
and his collaborators[2025] to illustrate the
improvement in convergence that one could achieve in
employing bubble functions. They covered
applications in the buckling analyses of plates with
various support conditions, plates under different
loading conditions, composite steel-concrete members
and inelastic buckling of plates and plate assemblies.
In Table 2, the buckling coefficients of flat plates
under compression were given. The coefficient (k
c
) is
defined as

c
"k
c
t
2
E
12(1!v
2
)
t
b
2
(4)
where c
c
is the critical stress, t is the plate thickness,
b is the plate width, E is the elastic modulus and v is
the Poissons ratio.
The loaded edges were simply supported whereas
the longitudinal edges were simply supported-
clamped. They also reported that by adopting the
bubble functions, the convergence could be
significantly improved. Conventional finite strip
would require four times more strips to achieve the
same accuracy.
Hancock carried out extensive studies on the
applications of the spline finite strip method in the
stability analyses of thin-walled structural sections.
Lau & Hancock[27] applied the spline finite strip
method to the inelastic buckling analysis which could
take into account the non-linear nature of the stress-
strain curves and strain hardening of the material and
residual stress distribution. Kwon & Hancock[28]
further developed the method to handle local,
distortional and overall buckling mode in the post-
buckling behaviour range, and the interaction between
the various modes. A computer package (THIN-
WALL)[29] is now available for such analysis.
Zhu & Cheung[30] also carried out the study of the
post-buckling behaviour of shells using the spline
finite strip method. In a recent publication[31], they
extended the method to study the behaviour of
cylindrical shells under combined loading (axial
compression and external pressure). They successfully
traced the post-buckling equilibriumpath and the post-
buckling radial deflections thus obtained were in good
agreement with experimental results. Fig. 5 shows the
relation between the axial load (P) and edge shortening
(o) for a cylinder under confining pressure (p).
Other pertinent parameters of the shell are as
follows:
Radius (R)"100 mm, thickness (t)"0.247, length
(L)"50.9 mm, Youngs modulus"5.56 GPa,
Poissons ratio"0.3.
FINITE STRIP METHOD 373
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375
Table 3 Results for four-layer cross-ply square laminate
(03/903/03/903) [35]
End-shortening
strain"0.02%
End-shortening
strain"0.10%
........................................ ..........................................
Load
factor
w
c
/thickness Load
factor
w
c
/thickness
.........................................................................................................................
Spline
1 section 27.69 0.5002 82.11 1.811
2 sections 27.23 0.5315 78.15 1.886
3 sections 27.17 0.5311 77.23 1.915
4 sections 27.14 0.5302 76.87 1.909
.........................................................................................................................
Ref [36] 27.28 0.5351 77.22 1.909
.........................................................................................................................
It was shown that the theoretical critical hydrostatic
pressure (p
c
) for this cylinder under completely
clamped conditions was 4.33 kPa. In the figure,
Z"((1!v
2
L/Rt, n is number of buckling wave
number and R
h
"p/p
c
.
Dawe and his collaborators[3336] studied the
buckling of laminated and composite plates using both
conventional and spline strips. Comparisons of the
buckling load factors and mid-point deflection(w
c
)
obtained by the finite strip using trigonometrical
series[36] and spline series are made in Table 3. The
results for Ref.[36] were obtained by using six and three
series terms for inplane displacements and out-of-
plane displacement respectively. Kong & Cheung[37]
proposed that beam vibration functions can be used to
analyse composite plates with intermediate line
support. Vibration of plates with point supports was
studied by Cheung & Zhou[38] using the static beam
functions.
Other investigators also carried out studies of
buckling of laminated plates or composite structures
using the finite strip approach and some of the recent
publications are given in the reference list[3941].
Wang & Rammerstorfer[42] determined the effective
breadth and effective width of stiffened plates not only
in the pre-buckling but also in the post-buckling range.
Though the stiffness and geometric matrices are un-
coupled in the prebuckling range, they will be coupled
in the post-buckling range. The solution process will
become inefficient as the sizes of the matrices increase
with number of terms used for the interpolation and
therefore, an interaction scheme was proposed.
Ignoring the coupling terms of the stiffness matrices,
the standard iteration process was used to obtain the
displacements. The additional error introduced by
neglecting the coupling terms of the stiffness matrices
was eliminated by further equilibrium iterations.
Kong[43] studied the response of plates under
various forms of loadings by the spline strips. In the
analysis, the non-linearity due to the membrane action
of the plates undergoing large deformation was taken
into account. The Ritz vector was adopted to improve
the efficiency of the solution scheme. On the other
hand, Zhu[44] solved the non-linear vibration problems
using spline strips by the incremental harmonic
balance method[45].
References and recommended reading
Papers of particular interest have been marked:
* Special interest
** Exceptional interest
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STRUCTURAL ANALYSIS AND CAD 374
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375
Y K Cheung
Department of Civil Engineering,
University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
L G Tham
Department of Civil Engineering,
University of Hong Kong,
Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
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FINITE STRIP METHOD 375
Copyright ^ 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Prog. Struct. Engng Mater. 2000; 2:369}375