Center of gravity and shear center of thin-walled open-section composite beams

Abstract

The definition of center of gravity and shear center of a thin-walled open-section laminated composite beam is a function of the geometry and the material properties of the section. The method is applicable to any arbitrary laminate stacking sequence, i.e. unsymmetric as well as symmetric, and shape of the cross section. Numerical results are obtained for singly symmetric channel and monosymmetric sections with antisymmetric angle-ply layups showing that the locations of the center of gravity and shear center are generally affected by fiber angle variations.