Effective characteristics of corrugated plates

Corrugated plates are widely used in modern constructions and structures, because they, in contrast to plane plates, possess greater rigidity. In many cases, such a plate can be modeled by a homogeneous anisotropic plate with certain effective flexural and tensional rigidities. Depending on the geometry of corrugations and their location, the equivalent homogeneous plate can also have rigidities of mutual influence. These rigidities allow one to take into account the influence of bending moments on the strain in the midplane and, conversely, the influence of longitudinal strains on the plate bending 1]. The behavior of the corrugated plate under the action of a load normal to the midsurface is described by equations of the theory of flexible plates with initial deflection. These equations form a coupled system of nonlinear partial differential equations with variable coefficients 2]. The dependence of the coefficients on the coordinates is determined by the corrugation geometry. In the case of a plate with periodic corrugation, the coefficients significantly vary within one typical element and depend on the values of local variables determined in each of the typical elements. There is a connection between the local and global variables, and therefore, the functions of local coordinates are simultaneously functions of global coordinates, which are sometimes called rapidly oscillating functions 3].One of the methods for solving the equations with rapidly oscillating coefficients is the asymptotic method of small geometric parameter. The standard procedure of this method usually includes preparatory stages. At the first stage, as a rule, a rectangular periodicity cell is distinguished to be a typical element. At the second stage, the scale of global coordinates is changed so that the rectangular structure periodicity cells became square cells of size l × l. The third stage consists in passing to the dimensionless global coordinates relative to the plate characteristic dimension L. As a result, the dependence between the new local variables and the new scaled dimensionless variables is such that the factor 1/α, where α=l/L ? 1 is a small geometric parameter, appears in differentiating any function of the local coordinate with respect to the global coordinate. After this, the solution of the problem in new coordinates is sought as an asymptotic expansion in the small geometric parameter 1], 4–10].We note that, in the small geometric parameter method, the asymptotic series simultaneously have the form of expansions in the gradients of functions depending only on the global coordinates. This averaging procedure can be applied to linear and nonlinear boundary value problems for differential equations with variable periodic coefficients for which the periodicity cell can be affinely transformed into the periodicity cube. In the case of an arbitrary dependence of the coefficients on the coordinates (including periodic dependence), another averaging technique can be used in linear problems. This technique is based on the possibility of the integral representation of the solution of the original problem for the linear equation with variables coefficients in terms of the solution of the same problem for an equation of the same type but with constant coefficients 11–13]. The integral representation implies that the solution of the original problem can be represented in the form of the series in the gradients of the solution of the problem for the equation with constant coefficients 13].The aim of the present paper is to develop methods for calculating effective characteristics of corrugated plates. To this end, we first write out the equilibrium equations for a flexible anisotropic plate, which is inhomogeneous in the thickness direction and in the horizontal projection, with an initial deflection. We write these equations in matrix form, which allows one to significantly reduce the length of the expressions and to simplify further calculations. After this, we average the initial matrix equations with variable coefficients. The averaging procedure implies the statement of problems such that, after solving them, we can calculate the desired effective characteristics. By way of example, we consider the case of a corrugated plate made of a homogeneous isotropic material whose corrugations are hexagonal in the horizontal projection. In this case, we obtain approximate expressions for the components of the effective tensors of flexural rigidity and longitudinal compliance and expressions for the effective plate thickness.