Abstract
The bistability of anti-symmetric thin shallow cylindrical polymer composite shells, made of carbon fiber/epoxy resin, has already been investigated based on the uniform curvature and inextensible deformation assumptions by researchers in detail. In this paper, a non-uniform curvature model that considers the extensible deformations is proposed. Furthermore, a parametric modeling and automatic postprocessing plug-in component for the bistability analysis of polymer composite cylindrical shells is established by means of ABAQUS-software, by which the equilibrium configurations and the load-displacement curves during the snap process can be easily obtained. The presented analytical model is validated by the numerical simulation and literature models, while the factors affecting the bistability of anti-symmetric cylindrical shells are revisited. In addition, the planform effects of anti-symmetric cylindrical shells with rectangular, elliptical and trapezoidal planform are discussed. The results show that the presented analytical model improves the accuracy of the prediction of the principal curvature of second equilibrium configuration and agree well with the numerical results.
Highlights
Owing to the ability to provide stiffness and strength during large shape change, bistable thin shallow polymer composite structures have shown potential as morphing structures used in aerospace [1,2,3], origami [4,5] and bionics [6,7,8]
The influence of the anti-symmetric cylindrical shell with different planform shapes is investigated by extensible uniform curvature model (EUCM), non-uniform curvature model (NUCM) and finite element analysis (FEA) in Table 6, where the error-1 and error-2 represent the relative error between results from FEA and EUCM and that from FEA and NUCM, respectively
This paper proposes a non-uniform curvature model with five degrees of freedom to investigate the bistability of the anti-symmetric cylindrical shells
Summary
Owing to the ability to provide stiffness and strength during large shape change, bistable thin shallow polymer composite structures have shown potential as morphing structures used in aerospace [1,2,3], origami [4,5] and bionics [6,7,8]. Considering the importance of initial Gaussian curvature [32], which further governs the relative variation between the stretching and bending strain energy densities, Seffen [21] put forward an extensible uniform curvature model (EUCM) It considered the practical deformations of shells instead of that in inextensible deformation assumption. The combined influence of the material properties and geometry was explored in a systematic way to reveal possible bistable solutions On this basis, Vidoli and Maurini [22] extended the EUCM, and found the existence of three equilibrium configurations for a specific wide range of initial curvatures. To the best of our knowledge, the bistability of anti-symmetric cylindrical polymer composite shells has not been reported based on the non-uniform curvature assumption.
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