Scientific paper ID 844 : 2013/3

The stressed and strained analysis of beams and girders is customarily based on the presumption that the restraints are applied at the center of gravity of the supported cross-sections. In practice however this is not always the case and the force transfer is more complex than assumed. The flat-bottomed rail resting on sleepers is one example in this respect. The vertical loadings from the track wheels evoke not only bending moments and shear but also compression force. Thus, a relevant analysis s a joint solution of the differential equations of bending and axial deformations. The aim of the paper is to show application of the generalized differential quadrature method (GDQM) for approximate analysis of off-center supported beams charged by transverse distributed loading with parabolically varying intensity. Recently GDQM has been applied in variety of single- and multi-dimensional problems in both mechanics of deformable bodies including fracture mechanics and fluid mechanics.