ANALYSIS OF THE TEMPERATURE GRADIENT EFFECT ON THE FREE-EDGE INTERLAMINAR STRESSES IN LAYERED STRUCTURES

摘要

For a multilayered anisotropic laminate subjected to non-uniform temperature loads, the intense and localized interlaminar stresses in the vicinity of a free edge may be significantly affected by the temperature gradient in the thickness direction. An efficient and reliable analysis method is presented, based on polynomial expansions of the Lekhnitskii stresses functions in the various layers and the principle of complementary energy. The variational method yields closed-form solutions of the interlaminar stresses in terms of eigenfunctions. Two types of non-uniform temperature fields, one depending only on the thickness coordinate and the other varying linearly in the normal direction of the free edge, are considered. A suitable combination of the respective solutions yields the local approximations of the free-edge interlaminar stresses in laminates under general non-uniform temperature loads. A temperature gradient normal to the free edge has a relatively small effect upon the interlaminar stresses.