Nonlinear Bending of Composite Circular Plates with Embedded Shape Memory Alloy Fibers

Abstract

Based on Brinson’s one-dimensional thermo-mechanical constitutive relations of shape memory alloys and the theory of thin plates in the von Kármán sense, the response of bending of a uniform heated circular plate embedded with SMA fibers in the radial directions and subjected to a uniform distributed mechanical load is studied. The characteristic curves of the central deflection versus temperature rise of the circular plate with both clamped and simply supported boundary conditions are obtained. The numerical results show that, the recovery forces of the pre-strained SMA caused by the phase transformation from martensite to austenite can modify the bending deformation significantly. So, it can be concluded that the bending deformation can be adjusted effectively and actively by embedment of the SMA fibers into the circular plates