In many cases beam elements are useful, as you say, only a few elements can replace many shell/solid elements. But in this case I would stay with shell elements. It's an open section, and beam elements are not good at capturing torsion, unless it is a circular cross section. In this case, it seems the load is uniform, and I see it as unlikely that the load resultant acts in the line of the shear center of the beam section. I.e. there will be torsion of the beam.
↧