Closed-form solutions for the coupled deflection of anisotropic Euler–Bernoulli composite beams with arbitrary boundary conditions

Abstract

The fully anisotropic response of composite beams is an important consideration in diverse applications including aeroelastic responses of helicopter rotor and wind turbine blades. Our goal is to present exact analytical solutions for the first time for coupled deflection of Euler–Bernoulli composite beams. Towards this goal, two approaches are proposed: (1) obtaining the exact analytical solutions directly from the governing equations of Euler–Bernoulli composite beams and (2) extraction of the solutions from Timoshenko composite beam solutions. For the direct solution approach, based on Euler–Bernoulli theory, new variationally-consistent field equations are obtained, in which four degrees of freedom, i.e. in-plane bending, out-of-plane bending, twist and axial elongation are fully coupled. By expressing the coupled system of differential equations in a compact matrix form, a novel expression for the eccentricity of neutral axes from the midplane, as well as the shift in shear centre from the centre of beam, is obtained. This eccentricity matrix serves to decouple the bending in the two principal directions from in-plane and twist deformations. Then, the general closed-form analytical solutions for the decoupled system are derived simply using direct integration. Additionally, the analogous closed-form analytical solutions are retrieved from the previously obtained Timoshenko composite beam solution and it is proven that they are identical to those obtained from the current direct approach for conditions where Euler–Bernoulli beam theory apply. To study the effects of anisotropy, numerical results are obtained for a number of examples with different composite stacking sequences showing various coupled behaviours. The results are compared against the Chebyshev collocation method as well as against less comprehensive analytical solutions available in the literature, noting that excellent agreement is observed, where expected. The present exact solutions can serve as benchmark problems for assessing the accuracy and convergence of various analytical and numerical methods.