Aeroelastic behavior of stiffened composite laminated panel with embedded SMA wire using the hierarchical Rayleigh–Ritz method

Abstract

This work investigates the effects of temperature in the shape memory alloy hybrid composites (SMAHC) cylindrical stiffened panels’ aeroelastic stability. The SMAHC is modelled using a micromechanical formulation embedding carbon fiber, SMA wire and resin to the same lamina and taking into account the martensite/austenite phases of transformation in the material response. Virtual work principle formulation is implemented with classical laminate plate theory (CLPT) panel formulation and one-dimensional Euler-Bernoulli beam theory formulation for the stiffener. Numerical results are obtained by using an energy based semi-analytical method applying hierarchical polynomials to approximate the membrane and out of plane displacement fields. Different geometric configurations, laminate stacking sequences, boundary conditions and radii of curvature are investigated. The study shows that the variation of temperature induce stiffening due to changes in the martensite/austenite fractions of the SMA, increasing the critical flutter dynamic pressure. Therefore, it can be achieved certain control in the flutter critical boundary by increasing the temperature of the shape memory alloy (SMA) wire. The effects due to the SMA wire stiffening with the temperature are more pronounced for cross-ply stiffened cylindrical panels with unitary aspect ratio and for angle-ply panels with aspect ratio higher than one.