Thermal Analysis of Free-Corner Effects in Cross-Ply Plates by a Higher-Order Theory Approach

Abstract

Stresses in the vicinity of free edges and corners of composite laminates exhibit a distinct localized three-dimensional behaviour [1] and thus represent an important technical situation. Since numerical analyses of stress concentration phenomena in layered structures are computationally expensive, the present contribution is devoted to a simple closed-form higher-order theory approach for the calculation of displacements, strains and stresses in the vicinity of a rectangular corner of symmetric cross-ply laminates under uniform thermal load ΔT. An appropriate representation for the displacement field in the form of a single-layer theory with unknown inplane components and appropriately assumed functions through the plate thickness yields closed-form expressions for the strains and stresses throughout the whole laminate. Equilibrium and boundary conditions are fulfilled in an integral sense. The present approach is easily applied, is of a completely closed-form analytic nature and requires only little computational effort. (© 2004 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)