Three-dimensional dynamics of functionally graded and laminated doubly-curved composite structures having arbitrary geometries and boundary conditions

Abstract

This paper focuses on the dynamics of doubly-curved functionally graded and laminated composite structures with arbitrary geometries and boundary conditions. Integral boundary value problem is obtained following an energy-based approach where the strain energy of the structure is expressed using three-dimensional elasticity equations. The effective properties of functionally graded materials can be described based on Mori–Tanaka or theory of mixtures methods. To simplify the domain of the problem, coordinate transformations are applied to map the curved structure into a straight one; and furthermore, a one-to-one mapping technique is applied to map the (complex) curved geometry to a master geometry in the case of composites with arbitrary geometries. Then, the integral boundary value problem is discretized by means of Gauss–Lobatto sampling and solved using the three-dimensional spectral-Tchebychev approach. In this method, the system matrices are calculated through the exact evaluation of differentiation and integration operations using the derived Tchebychev matrix operators. Finally, if necessary, to impose the essential boundary conditions on the boundary value problem and to assemble multiple layers, the projection matrices approach is used. Various case studies including (i) doubly-curved structures, (ii) doubly-curved laminated composites and (iii) doubly-curved laminated composite structures with arbitrary geometries are analyzed. In each case study, to present the accuracy/precision of the developed solution technique, the predicted (non-dimensional) natural frequencies and mode shapes are compared to those obtained using either a commercial finite element software and/or to those found in literature. It is shown that the developed three-dimensional spectral-Tchebychev solution technique enables accurately and efficiently capturing the vibration behavior of doubly-curved laminated composite structures having arbitrary geometries under different boundary conditions.