Graduation Semester and Year

2010

Language

English

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science in Aerospace Engineering

Department

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering

First Advisor

Kent L Lawrence

Abstract

The advantage of material properties and flexibility of choosing material have made composite materials a primary preference for structural application. Unlike isotropic materials, the parametric study of composite beams for optimized design is complicated due to high number of parameters involved in designing like lay-up sequence, and layer configuration. Moreover, the limitations of FEA techniques in designing have created a need for an analytical closed-form solution for stress analysis of laminated composite beams. The objective of this study focuses on the development of an analytical method for stress analysis of composite I-beam. This method includes the structural response due to unsymmetrical and/or unbalanced of laminate as well as unsymmetrical I-beam cross-section. These structural characteristics are often ignored in the most published studies. Analytical closed-form expressions for the sectional properties such as centroid, axial and bending stiffnesses of composite I-beam are derived. These sectional properties are then used to calculate the stress and strain of each ply of I-beam at any given location. Further, a finite element model is created using commercial software ANSYS 11.0 classic. The stress and strain results obtained by analytical method have excellent agreement with the results obtained from the finite element analysis.

Disciplines

Aerospace Engineering | Engineering | Mechanical Engineering

Comments

Degree granted by The University of Texas at Arlington

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