Stress-based formulation for non-linear analysis of planar elastic curved beams

•Non-linear analysis of curved, extensible, shear flexible, elastic planar beams.•Formulation based on a variational principle expressed in terms of stress components.•Very good performance in respect to other formulations available in literature.

A non-linear formulation for curved, extensible, shear flexible, elastic planar beams is presented. The formulation is based on a new variational principle expressed in terms of stress components. The effectiveness of the approach is illustrated through several numerical examples.