Continuous elastic beams with unilateral rigid supports (Q802363)

The paper deals with the nonlinear theory of a continuous elastic beam on unilateral rigid supports. The first studied beam is only a two-span scheme, but a generalization to the n-span case is given at the end of the paper. The cross-section is variable, its bending stiffness is discontinuous in a finite number of points. The loading consists of distributed forces, concentrated forces and couples. The equivalence of the problem with a weak differential problem and with a variational inequality is provided. The necessary conditions for the existence and uniqueness of a solution are found too. This is a demonstration that the mathematical model based on classical derivatives can be used to solve the cases of discrete loading on a continuous beam.