Perturbation series for shear stress in flexure of Saint-Venant cylinders with Bredt-like sections (Q1368319)

We study the flexure of a Saint-Venant cylinder whose sections are Bredt-like with constant thickness. We propose a perturbation series for the shear stress field in terms of a thickness parameter. In torsion, there is a unique stress flow function (named after Prandtl) for any regular section. On the contrary, in flexure of cylinders with bi-connected sections such a flow function cannot be uniquely determined. To avoid a gauge choice, we use different perturbation methods for mono- and bi-connected sections. In the last case we introduce a perturbation series directly for shear stress and Helmholtz differential operators. For both classes of sections we show that the resulting hierarchy of problems for the series terms can be solved.