Analytical solutions of thermal buckling and postbuckling of symmetric laminated composite beams with various boundary conditions

Abstract

Based on the first-order shear deformation beam theory, considering geometric nonlinearity, the governing equations for symmetric laminated composite beams subjected to uniform temperature rise are derived by using Hamilton’s principle, and then three solving methods are presented to deal with it. By introducing an auxiliary function, which is shown in method one, the governing equations are reduced to be a single fourth-order integral-differential equation, and the exact solutions for the thermal buckling and postbuckling of symmetric laminated composite beams with combination of in-plane immovable simply supported and clamped boundary conditions are presented for the first time. On the basis of the results given in the method one, the explicit solutions for the thermal buckling and postbuckling of the beams are presented by giving accurate displacement functions (method two) and Ritz method (method three), respectively. Then, the effects of the transverse shear effects and boundary conditions on the thermal buckling and postbuckling of the beams are qualitatively discussed. What is more, a preliminary discussion on the probability and difference of extending the giving methods to the higher-order shear deformation beam theory with various boundary conditions is conducted. In the numerical examples, the good agreements between the present results and existing solutions verify the validity and efficiency of the present analysis and numerical results. And then the symmetric cross-ply laminated composite beam (0/90/0) is taken as an example to numerically evaluate the effects of the length-to-thickness ratio, beam theories, and boundary conditions on the thermal buckling and postbuckling of symmetric laminated composite beams. Some meaningful conclusions have been drawn.