Thermo-mechanical coupling analysis of laminated composite plates using wavelet finite element method

Abstract

This paper proposes a novel high performance wavelet finite element formulation for thermo-mechanical coupling analysis of laminated composite plates. The Reddy’s higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) adopted for theoretical formulation represents parabolic variation of transverse shear stresses through thickness to take into account the effects of transverse shears and traction-free boundary conditions for laminated composite plates. The governing equations involving displacement field and temperature gradient field in term of the thickness variable are derived by implementing the principle of virtual work. Then the B-spline wavelet on the interval (BSWI) wavelet-based element is constructed by means of scaling functions as approximating functions instead of polynomial interpolations used in traditional finite element method (FEM). The convergence, accuracy and efficiency of proposed BSWI wavelet-based method are verified for mechanical and thermal analysis of laminated composite plates with fewer degrees of freedom. Then numerical examples concerning various length-to-thickness ratios, aspect ratios and stacking sequences are investigated for thermo-mechanical coupling analysis of symmetric and anti-symmetric laminated composite plates. These comparison examples demonstrate the accuracy and reliability of the proposed BSWI wavelet-based method comparing with the three-dimensional elasticity solutions and referential numerical solutions available in literatures.