Buckling Sensitivity of Tow-Steered Plates Subjected to Multiscale Defects by High-Order Finite Elements and Polynomial Chaos Expansion

Abstract

It is well known that fabrication processes inevitably lead to defects in the manufactured components. However, thanks to the new capabilities of the manufacturing procedures that have emerged during the last decades, the number of imperfections has diminished while numerical models can describe the ground truth designs. Even so, a variety of defects has not been studied yet, let alone the coupling among them. This paper aims to characterise the buckling response of Variable Stiffness Composite (VSC) plates subjected to spatially varying fibre volume content as well as fibre misalignments, yielding a multiscale sensitivity analysis. On the one hand, VSCs have been modelled by means of the Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF) and a layer-wise (LW) approach, with which independent stochastic fields can be assigned to each composite layer. On the other hand, microscale analysis has been performed by employing CUF-based Mechanics of Structure Genome (MSG), which was used to build surrogate models that relate the fibre volume fraction and the material elastic properties. Then, stochastic buckling analyses were carried out following a multiscale Monte Carlo analysis to characterise the buckling load distributions statistically. Eventually, it was demonstrated that this multiscale sensitivity approach can be accelerated by an adequate usage of sampling techniques and surrogate models such as Polynomial Chaos Expansion (PCE). Finally, it has been shown that sensitivity is greatly affected by nominal fibre orientation and the multiscale uncertainty features.

Buckling and post-buckling of variable stiffness plates with cutouts by a single-domain Ritz method

“…Different variable stiffness laminates are considered built with VAT plies having linearly varying fibre orientation angle, see Eq. (11), and [± (θ 0 ⟨θ A /θ B ⟩)] 4S layup. The plates are simply-supported along all the edges with free bending and torsional rotations.…”

“…Starting from the pioneering works of Hyer and coworkers [5,6], many studies have been performed in the literature by using the finite element method (FEM), see e.g. [7,8,9,10,11,12,13], only to cite some recent works, that largely contributed to the understanding of variable stiffness composites behaviour as regard stress distributions, buckling, vibrations and failure.Starting from the pioneering works of Hyer and coworkers [5,6], many studies have been performed in the literature by using the finite element method (FEM), see e.g. [7,8,9], only to cite some recent works, that largely contributed to the understanding of variable stiffness composites behaviour.…”

Application of the ps−Version of the Finite Element Method to the Analysis of Laminated Shells

“…The and refinements provide two systematic ways to improve the precision of the FE solution and yield excellent results when global quantities are of interest. Different applications of these strategies to advanced composite shells and plates can be found in the literature, such as sandwich plates [ 9 ], functionally graded laminates [ 10 , 11 ], shell structures with orthogonal periodic configurations [ 12 ], cylindrical shells made of metamaterials with spatially variable elastic properties [ 13 ], and variable stiffness composites [ 14 , 15 , 16 , 17 ].…”

Finite strip method based on Carrera unified formulation for the free vibration analysis of variable stiffness composite laminates

“…Pagani and Sanchez-Majano 18,19 investigated the influence of fiber misalignments on the buckling response and failure behaviors of VSCL structures. Lately, Sanchez-Majano et al 20 analyzed the influence of manufacturing defects on the mechanical performance of VSCL plates. Also, Sanchez-Majano et al 21 analyzed the mechanical behavior of VSCL shells structures subjected to different external loadings and boundary conditions.…”