Nonlinear Instability and Reliability Analysis of Composite Laminated Beams
Authors: Fereidooni Alireza 
Published: May 2021

The wide range of high performance engineering applications of composite laminated structures demands a proper understanding of their dynamics performance. Due to the complexity and nonlinear behaviour of such structures, developing a mathematical model to determine the dynamic instability boundaries is indispensable and challenging. The aim of this research is to investigate the dynamic behaviour of shear deformable composite laminated beams subjected to varying time conservative and nonconservative loads. The dynamic instability behaviour of non-conservative and conservative system are dissimilar. In case of conservative loading, the instability region intersects the loading axis, but in case of non-conservative loads the region will be increased with loading increases.

The extended Hamilton’s principle and the first order shear deformation theory are employed in this investigation to establish the integral form of the equation of motion of the beam. A five node beam model is presented to descritize the integral form of the governing equations. The model has the capability to capture the dynamic effects of the transverse shear stress, warping, and bending-twisting, bending-stretching, and stretching-twisting couplings. Also, the geometric and loading nonlinearities are included in the equation of system. The beam model incorporates, in full form, the non-classical effects of warping on stability and dynamic response of symmetrical and unsymmetrical composite beams. In case of nonlinear elasticity, the resonance curves are bent toward the increasing exciting frequencies.

The response of the stable beam is pure periodic and follow the loading frequency. When the beam is asymptotically stable the response of the beam is aperiodic and does not follow the loading frequency. In unstable state of the beam response frequency increases with time and is higher than the loading frequency, also the amplitude of the beam will increases, end to beam failure. The amplitude of the beam subjected to substantial excitation loading parameters increases in a typical nonlinear manner and leads to the beats phenomena.

The principal regions of dynamic instability are determined for various loading and boundary conditions using the Floquet’s theory. The beam response in the regions of instability is investigated. Axially loaded beam may be unstable not just in load equal to critical load and/or loading frequency equal to beam natural frequency. In fact there are infinite points in region of instability in plane load vs. frequency that the beam can be unstable. The region of instability of the shear deformable beams is wider compare to non-shear deformable beams. The lower bound of the instability region of the shear deformable beams changes faster than upper bound.

Probabilistic stability analysis of the uncertain laminated beams subject to both conservative and nonconservative loads is studied. The effects of material and geometry uncertainties on dynamics instability of the beam, is investigated through a probabilistic finite element analysis and Monte Carlo Simulation methods. For non-conservative systems variations of uncertain material properties has a smaller influence than variations of geometric properties over the instability of the beam.