Thermal post-buckling analysis of a laminated composite beam

Abstract

The purpose of this study is to investigate thermal post-buckling analysis of a laminated composite beam subjected under uniform temperature rising with temperature dependent physical properties. The beam is pinned at both ends and immovable ends. Under temperature rising, thermal buckling and post-buckling phenomena occurs with immovable ends of the beam. In the nonlinear kinematic model of the post-buckling problem, total Lagrangian approach is used in conjunction with the Timoshenko beam theory. Also, material properties of the laminated composite beam are temperature dependent: that is the coefficients of the governing equations are not constant. In the solution of the nonlinear problem, incremental displacement-based finite element method is used with Newton-Raphson iteration method. The effects of the fibber orientation angles, the stacking sequence of laminates and temperature rising on the post-buckling deflections, configurations and critical buckling temperatures of the composite laminated beam are illustrated and discussed in the numerical results. Also, the differences between temperature dependent and independent physical properties are investigated for post-buckling responses of laminated composite beams.