In the present study, symmetric linearly width-tapered laminated composite beams are considered. Due to the variety of width-tapered composite beam configurations and the complexity of the analysis, no closed-form analytical solution is available at present regarding their free vibration and buckling response. Therefore in the present work, the Rayleigh-Ritz method is used solve for such response. The effects of axial tensile and compressive forces on the free vibration response are analyzed. The analysis is based on ID laminated beam theory. The governing equations are obtained using Hamilton's principle. First-ply failure analysis based on Tsai-Wu failure criterion is also conducted to calculate the tensile and compressive failure loads of the laminate. Buckling analysis is conducted to determine the critical buckling load of the laminated composite beam-column subjected to different boundary conditions. Simply supported, Clamped-free, Clamped-Clamped and Free-Clamped boundary conditions are considered. A parametric study is conducted on width-tapered laminated composite beams to investigate the influence of the ratio of the widths, boundary conditions and the end axial force on the natural frequencies of the composite beam-column. The material properties of NCT/301 graphite-epoxy ply are used for the parametric study.
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