Thermal transient stresses due to rapid cooling in a thermally and elastically orthotropic medium

Abstract

This paper reports the residual thermal transient stresses that develop within a thermally and elastically orthotropic medium with a rectangular boundary. The material is rapidly cooled from the steady-state thermal environment under prescribed surface temperatures down to room temperature. Based upon the solution of transient temperature field, the thermal stress analysis is performed by using an elastic displacement potential approach. The two-dimensional temperature and stress fields have been obtained in series expansion forms. Numerical calculations are performed for a typical unidirectional fiber composite. The results demonstrate that the residual thermal stresses exhaust a significant portion of the tensile strength of the composite material.