Dynamic Analysis of a Cracked Composite Beam

Abstract

Abstract Composite materials tailored for specific applications exhibit customized properties which the ordinary materials do not possess. Therefore, performance analysis of composite materials for desired applications is important to ensure the longer life of the structure without failure. When subjected to dynamic loading, the crack growth and corresponding vibration behavior of the composite structures are of special interest. Therefore, in this research, vibration characteristics of a proposed cracked composite beam is investigated by conducting computational simulation. The composite structure is composed of four layers of fiberglass-epoxy material and a soft honeycomb structure sandwiched between the top and bottom layers of the composite material. Symmetric configurations of different ply angles of composites with respect to the midplane of the structure are used. The corresponding finite element model is created in the commercially available finite element package of Abaqus. A V-shaped crack is considered in the composite beam structure with various crack opening sizes. The variations of natural frequencies of vibration of the composite cracked beam with variations in the crack opening sizes are presented for different modes. Then the variations of natural frequencies with the depths and positions of the cracks along the length of the beam are studied. Variations of vibration characteristics are presented for the composite beam for the rotating and nonrotating cases. Convergence study for the solution accuracy of the beam is conducted for both the rotating and nonrotating cases.