Exact Analysis for Composite Laminates under Extension and Bending

Abstract

This work used the Hamiltonian state space approach for the exact analysis of displacement and stress fields in the multilayered laminated composite plates of elastic materials under extension and bending Without grouping the field variables in an ad hoc process the basic equations of elasticity in the Cartesian coordinates are formulated into a state equation and an output equation which are composed of the primary variables in terms of the generalized displacements and the conjugate generalized tractions by means of Legendre’s transformation from the Lagrangian system The present approach is effective and systematic The solution process involves an eigenfunction expansion technique transfer matrix method and symplectic orthogonality between the eigenvectors of a Hamiltonian matrix and all the basic equations of anisotropic elasticity the traction-free conditions on the bounding planes of the rectangular section the boundary conditions at the end sections where the external loadings are applied and the interfacial continuity conditions in the multilayered laminated systems are satisfied exactly regardless of the number of layers Comparisons of the stress fields between the proposed analytical and finite element solutions show good agreement The present approach is important with regard to studying the free-edge effects in addition to obtaining solutions which serve as useful benchmarks for numerical modeling and material characterization of composite laminates

Date of Award	2016 Dec 29
Original language	English
Supervisor	Shen-Haw Ju (Supervisor)