ABSTRACT
The present paper is dedicated to the new concept of extra light beams named Tens-Foam-Ity. The idea originates within the well-known concepts of Tensegrity and Tensairity. Bending stiffness of the light timber beams is extended and stabilized via the veneer box filled with foam and covered by cables. Medium scale experimental results, made at the Warsaw University of Life Sciences, are presented and discussed. The simple computational model, proposed in the paper, is based on the Timoshenko beam theory with using the finite element method. The stiffness, geometric stiffness and mass matrices are based on the so-called physical shape functions to obtain high precision efficient formulation. Numerical results are calibrated and compared to experiments.
