A review of the problem of the shear centre(s) (Q1291850)

We give a general survey of the literature on the title problem, and compare two definitions of the shear centre (here named kinematic and energetic). It is remarked how the energetic definition for the shear centre makes it coinciding with a suitably chosen twist centre. An example shows that the two definitions generally fail to provide the same place, even for simple cross-sections. It is also shown that the two definitions provide the same place, using standard approximate formulae, in the case of thin-walled mono-connected sections with regularly varying thickness and two-connected sections with constant thickness. As a new result, we demonstrate that the two definitions of shear centre do not provide the same place for thin-walled sections with connection higher than two, even in the trivial case of uniform thickness; an example is given.