Transient thermal conduction in rectangular fiber reinforced composite laminates

A finite element formulation based on the Fourier law of heat conduction is presented to analyze the transient temperature distribution in rectangular fiber-reinforced composite plates. Three-dimensional twenty-noded brick elements are used to discretize the spatial domain of the plate. A Crank-Nicolson time marching scheme is used to solve the resulting time-dependent ordinary differential equations. The finite element solution is tested for convergence of results with mesh refinement. Further, the FEM is validated comparing the qualitative nature of results obtained for a plate made of aluminium and steel laminae with that of Tanigawa et al. Results are presented for graphite/epoxy and graphite-kevlar/epoxy plates subjected to different thermal boundary conditions. Laminae with fiber orientations of 0amp;deg;, amp;plusmn45amp;deg;, and 90amp;deg; are considered for the analysis. The results indicate that the temperature variation in the plane of the plate (x-y plane) is very much dependent on the boundary conditions. When the faces of the plate through the thickness are insulated, the number of elements in the x-y plane is observed to have no effect on the accuracy of the result

Transverse vibrations of hybrid laminated plates

In this paper, an attempt is made to obtain the free vibration response of hybrid, laminated rectangular and skew plates. The Galerkin technique is employed to obtain an approximate solution of the governing differential equations. It is found that this technique is well suited for the study of such problems. Results are presented in a graphical form for plates with one pair of opposite edges simply supported and the other two edges clamped. The method is quite general and can be applied to any other boundary conditions

Deflection analysis of hybrid laminated composite plates

In this paper an attempt is made to obtain deflections of hybrid, laminated, rectangular and skew composite plates. Analysis is performed by employing the Galerkin technique. Numerical results have been obtained for two types of layups employing Kevlar/epoxy and Boron/epoxy laminae. It is observed that for a given aspect ratio the rigidity of the skew plate increases with an increase in the skew angle. Further, for a specified deflection, the hybrid laminates turn out to be lighter