Higher order zig-zag theory for fully coupled thermo-electric–mechanical smart composite plates

A higher order zig-zag plate theory is developed to refine the prediction of the mechanical, thermal, and electric behaviors fully coupled. Both in-plane displacement and temperature fields through the thickness are constructed by superimposing linear zig-zag field to the smooth globally cubic varying field. Smooth parabolic distribution through the thickness is assumed in the out-of-plane displacement field in order to consider transverse normal deformation. Linear zig-zag form is adopted in the electric potential. The layer-dependent degrees of freedom of displacement and temperature fields are expressed in terms of reference primary degrees of freedom by applying interface continuity conditions as well as bounding surface conditions of transverse shear stresses and transverse heat fluxes. Thus the proposed theory is not only accurate but also efficient. Through the numerical examples of coupled and uncoupled analysis, the accuracy and efficiency of the present theory are demonstrated. The present theory is suitable in the predictions of fully coupled behaviors of thick smart composite plate under mechanical, thermal, and electric loads combined.     

A new zig-zag theory and C<Superscript>0</Superscript> plate bending element for composite and sandwich plates

A higher-order zig-zag theory for laminated composite and sandwich structures is proposed. The proposed theory satisfies the interlaminar continuity conditions and free surface conditions of transverse shear stresses. Moreover, the number of unknown variables involved in present model is independent of the number of layers. Compared to the zig-zag theory available in literature, the merit of present theory is that the first derivatives of transverse displacement have been taken out from the in-plane displacement fields, so that the C⁰ interpolation functions is only required during its finite element implementation. To obtain accurately transverse shear stresses by integrating three-dimensional equilibrium equations within one element, a six-node triangular element is employed to model the present zig-zag theory. Numerical results show that the present zig-zag theory can predict more accurate in-plane displacements and stresses in comparison with other zig-zag theories. Moreover, it is convenient to obtain transverse shear stresses by integration of equilibrium equations, as the C⁰ shape functions is only used when implemented in a finite element.     

Boundary-layer hygrothermal stresses in laminated, composite, circular, cylindrical shell panels

Free-edge effects in laminated, circular, cylindrical shell panels subjected to hygrothermal loading are studied by utilizing displacement-based technical theories. Starting from the most general displacement field of elasticity for long, circular, cylindrical shells, appropriate reduced displacement fields are determined for laminated composite shell panels with cross-ply and antisymmetric angle-ply layups. An equivalent single-layer shell theory is used to analytically determine the constant parameters appearing in the reduced displacement fields. A layerwise shell theory is then employed to analytically determine the local displacement functions and the boundary-layer interlaminar stresses in cross-ply and antisymmetric angle-ply shell panels under hygroscopic and/or thermal changes. Several numerical examples for the distributions of transverse shear and normal stresses in various shell panels under a uniform temperature change are presented and discussed.     

Assessment of improved zigzag and smeared theories for smart cross-ply composite cylindrical shells including transverse normal extensibility under thermoelectric loading

The improved zigzag theory recently developed by the authors for smart, piezoelectric, and laminated cylindrical shells is assessed for the response of finite-length cross-ply shells and shell panels under mechanical, potential, and thermal loading, in direct comparison with the exact three-dimensional (3D) piezothermoelasticity solution. This theory has the unique features of including the transverse normal strain due to thermoelectric loading without introducing additional deflection variables, capturing the nonlinear potential field and actual temperature profile across laminate thickness, accounting for the layerwise (zigzag) variation of inplane displacements, and satisfying the conditions on transverse shear stresses at the layer interfaces and at the inner and outer surfaces. For the assessment, new results are obtained for the 3D exact solution for smart cylindrical shells having a test laminate with widely different material properties across layers, a piezo-composite laminate and a piezo-sandwich laminate. To ascertain the contribution of the layerwise terms in the inplane displacements, the theory is compared with its smeared counterpart with the same number of primary variables. The effect of inclusion of transverse normal extensibility in these theories is established by comparing with their conventional counterparts that assume constant deflection across the thickness. The effect of span angle (for shell panels), length, and thickness parameters on the error of the 2D theories is illustrated.     

Non-linearities in rotation and thickness deformation in a new third-order thickness deformation theory for static and dynamic analysis of isotropic and laminated doubly curved shells

A geometrically non-linear theory is developed for shells of generic shape allowing for third-order thickness and shear deformation and rotary inertia by using eight parameters; geometric imperfections are also taken into account. The geometrically non-linear strain–displacement relationships are derived retaining full non-linear terms in all the 8 parameters, i.e. in-plane and transverse displacements, rotations of the normal and thickness deformation parameters; these relationships are presented in curvilinear coordinates, ready to be implemented in computer codes. Higher order terms in the transverse coordinate are retained in the derivation so that the theory is suitable also for thick laminated shells. Three-dimensional constitutive equations are used for linear elasticity. The theory is applied to circular cylindrical shells complete around the circumference and simply supported at both ends to study initially static finite deformation. Both radially distributed forces and displacement-dependent pressure are used as load and results for different shell theories are compared. Results show that a 6 parameter non-linear shell theory is quite accurate for isotropic shells. Finally, large-amplitude forced vibrations under harmonic excitation are investigated by using the new theory and results are compared to other available theories. The new theory with non-linearity in all the 8 parameters is the only one to predict correctly the thickness deformation; it works accurately for both static and dynamics loads.     

Drilling couples and refined constitutive equations in the resultant geometrically non-linear theory of elastic shells

It is well known that distribution of displacements through the shell thickness is non-linear, in general. We introduce a modified polar decomposition of shell deformation gradient and a vector of deviation from the linear displacement distribution. When strains are assumed to be small, this allows one to propose an explicit definition of the drilling couples which is proportional to tangential components of the deviation vector. The consistent second approximation to the complementary energy density of the geometrically non-linear theory of isotropic elastic shells is constructed. From differentiation of the density we obtain the consistently refined constitutive equations for 2D surface stretch and bending measures. These equations are then inverted for 2D stress resultants and stress couples. The second-order terms in these constitutive equations take consistent account of influence of undeformed midsurface curvatures. The drilling couples are explicitly expressed by the stress couples, undeformed midsurface curvatures, and amplitudes of quadratic part of displacement distribution through the thickness. The drilling couples are shown to be much smaller than the stress couples, and their influence on the stress and strain state of the shell is negligible. However, such very small drilling couples have to be admitted in non-linear analyses of irregular multi-shell structures, e.g. shells with branches, intersections, or technological junctions. In such shell problems six 2D couple resultants are required to preserve the structure of the resultant shell theory at the junctions during entire deformation process.     

A unified nonlinear formulation for plate and shell theories

A general geometrically exact nonlinear theory for the dynamics of laminated plates and shells under-going large-rotation and small-strain vibrations in three-dimensional space is presented. The theory fully accounts for geometric nonlinearities by using the new concepts of local displacements and local engineering stress and strain measures, a new interpretation and manipulation of the virtual local rotations, an exact coordinate transformation, and the extended Hamilton principle. Moreover, the model accounts for shear coupling effects, continuity of interlaminar shear stresses, free shear-stress conditions on the bonding surfaces, and extensionality. Because the only differences among different plates and shells are the initial curvatures of the coordinates used in the modeling and all possible initial curvatures are included in the formulation, the theory is valid for any plate or shell geometry and contains most of the existing nonlinear and shear-deformable plate and shell theories as special cases. Five fully nonlinear partial-differential equations and corresponding boundary and corner conditions are obtained, which describe the extension-extension-bending-shear-shear vibrations of general laminated two-dimensional structures and display linear elastic and nonlinear geometric coupling among all motions. Moreover, the energy and Newtonian formulations are completely correlated in the theory.     

Low-energy impact of adaptive cylindrical piezoelectric–composite shells

A theoretical framework for analyzing low-energy impacts of laminated shells with active and sensory piezoelectric layers is presented, including impactor dynamics and contact law. The formulation encompasses a coupled piezoelectric shell theory mixing first order shear displacement assumptions and layerwise variation of electric potential. An exact in-plane Ritz solution for the impact of open cylindrical piezoelectric–composite shells is developed and solved numerically using an explicit time integration scheme. The active impact control problem of adaptive cylindrical shells with distributed curved piezoelectric actuators is addressed. The cases of optimized state feedback controllers and output feedback controllers using piezoelectric sensors are analyzed. Numerical results quantify the impact response of cylindrical shells of various curvatures including the signal of curved piezoelectric sensors. Additional numerical studies quantify the impact response of adaptive cylindrical panels and investigate the feasibility of actively reducing the impact force.     

Phenomenological invariants and their application to geometrically nonlinear formulation of triangular finite elements of shear deformable shells

A phenomenological definition of classical invariants of strain and stress tensors is considered. Based on this definition, the strain and stress invariants of a shell obeying the assumptions of the Reissner–Mindlin plate theory are determined using only three normal components of the corresponding tensors associated with three independent directions at the shell middle surface. The relations obtained for the invariants are employed to formulate a 15-dof curved triangular finite element for geometrically nonlinear analysis of thin and moderately thick elastic transversely isotropic shells undergoing arbitrarily large displacements and rotations. The question of improving nonlinear capabilities of the finite element without increasing the number of degrees of freedom is solved by assuming that the element sides are extensible planar nearly circular arcs. The shear locking is eliminated by approximating the curvature changes and transverse shear strains based on the solution of the Timoshenko beam equations. The performance of the finite element is studied using geometrically linear and nonlinear benchmark problems of plates and shells.     

Conforming radial point interpolation method for spatial shell structures on the stress-resultant shell theory

The implementation of the conforming radial point interpolation method (CRPIM) for spatial thick shell structures is presented in this paper. The formulation of the discrete system equations is derived from a stress-resultant geometrically exact theory of shear flexible shells based on the Cosserat surface. A discrete singularity-free mapping between the five degrees of freedom of the Cosserat surface and the normal formulation with six degrees of freedom is constructed by exploiting the geometry connection between the orthogonal group and the unit sphere. A radial basis function is used in both the construction of shape functions based on arbitrarily distributed nodes as well as in the surface approximation of general spatial shell geometries. The major advantage of the CRPIM is that the shape functions possess a delta function property and the interpolation function obtained passes through all the scattered points in the influence domain. Thus, essential boundary conditions can be easily imposed, as in finite element method. A range of shape parameters is studied to examine the performance of CRPIM for shells, and optimal values are proposed. The phenomena of shear locking and membrane locking are illustrated by presenting the membrane and shear energies as fractions of the total energy. Several benchmark problems for shells are analyzed to demonstrate the validity and efficiency of the present CRPIM. The convergence rate of the results using a Gaussian (EXP) radial basis is relatively high compared to those using a multi-quadric (MQ) radial basis for the shell problems.     

A refined finite element method for bending analysis of laminated plates integrated with piezoelectric fiber-reinforced composite actuators

This research presents a finite element formulation based on four-variable refined plate theory for bending analysis of cross-ply and angle-ply laminated composite plates integrated with a piezoelectric fiber-reinforced composite actuator under electromechanical loading. The four-variable refined plate theory is a simple and efficient higher-order shear deformation theory, which predicts parabolic variation of transverse shear stresses across the plate thickness and satisfies zero traction conditions on the plate free surfaces. The weak form of governing equations is derived using the principle of minimum potential energy, and a 4-node non-conforming rectangular plate element with 8 degrees of freedom per node is introduced for discretizing the domain. Several benchmark problems are solved by the developed MATLAB code and the obtained results are compared with those from exact and other numerical solutions, showing good agreement.     

Large rotations in first-order shear deformation FE analysis of laminated shells

The paper deals with the geometrically non-linear analysis of laminated composite beams, plates and shells in the framework of the first-order transverse shear deformation (FOSD) theory. A central point of the present paper is the discussion of the relevance of five- and six-parameter variants, respectively, of the FOSD hypothesis for large rotation plate and shell problems. In particular, it is shown that the assumption of constant through-thickness distribution of the transverse normal displacements is acceptable only for small and moderate rotation problems. Implications inherent in this assumption that are incompatible with large rotations are discussed from the point of view of the transverse normal strain-displacement relations as well as in the light of an enhanced, accurate large rotation formulation based on the use of Euler angles. The latter one is implemented as an updating process within a Total Lagrangian formulation of the six-parameter FOSD large rotation plate and shell theory. Numerical solutions are obtained by using isoparametric eight-node Serendipity-type shell finite elements with reduced integration. The Riks-Wempner-Ramm arc-length control method is used to trace primary and secondary equilibrium paths in the pre- and post-buckling range of deformation. A number of sample problems of non-linear, large rotation response of composite laminated plate and shell structures are presented including symmetric and asymmetric snap-through and snap-back problems.     

Corotational nonlinear analyses of laminated shell structures using a 4-node quadrilateral flat shell element with drilling stiffness

A new 4-node quadrilateral flat shell element is developed for geometrically nonlinear analyses of thin and moderately thick laminated shell structures. The fiat shell element is constructed by combining a quadrilateral area co- ordinate method （QAC） based membrane element AGQ6- II, and a Timoshenko beam function （TBF） method based shear deformable plate bending element ARS-Q12. In order to model folded plates and connect with beam elements, the drilling stiffness is added to the element stiffness matrix based on the mixed variational principle. The transverse shear rigidity matrix, based on the first-order shear deformation theory （FSDT）, for the laminated composite plate is evaluated using the transverse equilibrium conditions, while the shear correction factors are not needed. The conventional TBF methods are also modified to efficiently calculate the element stiffness for laminate. The new shell element is extended to large deflection and post-buckling analyses of isotropic and laminated composite shells based on the element independent corotational formulation. Numerical re- sults show that the present shell element has an excellent numerical performance for the test examples, and is applicable to stiffened plates.     

功能梯度截顶圆锥壳的热弹性弯曲精确解

研究了功能梯度材料截顶圆锥壳在横向机械载荷与非均匀热载荷同时作用下的变形问题. 基于经典线性壳体理论推导出了以横向剪力和中面转角为基本未知量的功能梯度薄圆锥壳轴对称变形的混合型控制方程. 假设功能梯度圆锥壳的材料性质为沿厚度方向按照幂函数连续变化的形式. 然后采用解析方法求解,得到了问题的精确解. 分别就两端简支和两端固支边界条件,给出了圆锥壳的变形随其载荷、材料参数等变化的特征关系曲线,重点分析和讨论了载荷参数与材料梯度变化参数对变形的影响.      

Geometrically non-linear transient analysis of laminated,doubly curved shells

A dynamic, shear deformation theory of a doubly curved shell is used to develop a finite element for geometrically non-linear (in the von Karman sense) transient analysis of laminated composite shells. The element is employed to determine the transient response of spherical and cylindrical shells with various boundary conditions and loading. The effect of shear deformation and geometric non-linearity on the transient response is investigated. The numerical results presented here for transient analysis of laminated composite shells should serve as references for future investigations.     

Stress analysis of functionally graded shells using a 7-parameter shell element

In this paper, finite element stress analysis of functionally graded structures using a high-order spectral/hp shell finite element is presented. The shell element is based on a seven-parameter first-order shear deformation theory in which the seventh parameter, in addition to the usual six degrees of freedom, is the thickness stretch. The continuum shell element is utilized for the numerical simulations of the fully geometrically nonlinear response of functionally graded elastic shell structures. Several nontrivial shell problems are considered to report deflections and stresses, the latter being the main focus of the current paper. It is found that the stresses computed in the current study agree only in some cases with those of ANSYS and/or ABAQUS and thus requires additional study to determine the cause of the disagreement.     

Nonlinear vibration of a rotating laminated composite circular cylindrical shell: traveling wave vibration

In this paper, the large-amplitude (geometrically nonlinear) vibrations of rotating, laminated composite circular cylindrical shells subjected to radial harmonic excitation in the neighborhood of the lowest resonances are investigated. Nonlinearities due to large-amplitude shell motion are considered using the Donnell’s nonlinear shallow-shell theory, with account taken of the effect of viscous structure damping. The dynamic Young’s modulus which varies with vibrational frequency of the laminated composite shell is considered. An improved nonlinear model, which needs not to introduce the Airy stress function, is employed to study the nonlinear forced vibrations of the present shells. The system is discretized by Galerkin’s method while a model involving two degrees of freedom, allowing for the traveling wave response of the shell, is adopted. The method of harmonic balance is applied to study the forced vibration responses of the two-degrees-of-freedom system. The stability of analytical steady-state solutions is analyzed. Results obtained with analytical method are compared with numerical simulation. The agreement between them bespeaks the validity of the method developed in this paper. The effects of rotating speed and some other parameters on the nonlinear dynamic response of the system are also investigated.     

Asymptotic homogenization modeling of smart composite generally orthotropic grid-reinforced shells: Part II– Applications

A comprehensive micromechanical model for the analysis of thin smart composite grid-reinforced shells with an embedded periodic grid of generally orthotropic cylindrical reinforcements that may also exhibit piezoelectric properties is developed and applied to examples of practical importance. Details on derivation of a general homogenized smart shell model are provided in Part I of this work. The present paper solves the obtained unit cell problems and develops expressions for the effective elastic, piezoelectric and thermal expansion coefficients for the grid reinforced smart composite shell. Thus obtained effective coefficients are universal in nature and can be used to study a wide variety of boundary value problems. The applicability of the model is illustrated by means of several examples including cylindrical reinforced smart composite shells, and multi-layer smart shells. The derived expressions allow tailoring the effective properties of a smart grid-reinforced shell to meet the requirements of a particular application by changing certain geometric or physical parameters.