Dynamic Stability of Thin-Walled Curved Beams Made of Composite Materials

PIOVAN MARCELO TULIO; CORTÍNEZ VÍCTOR HUGO; MACHADO SEBASTIÁN PABLO

Angra dos Reis, Brasil

Congreso; XIII International Symposium on Dynamic Problems of Mechanics (DINAME 2009); 2009

Committee of Dynamics of the Brazilian Society of Mechanical Sciences and Engineering (ABCM).

Structures made of composite materials are increasingly used in several areas of engineering. This fact is due to the improved properties of the composites such as higher stiffness to weight and resistance to weight ratios, enhanced properties against fatigue, etc. In many cases these types of materials adopt the form of thin-walled slender structures. Therefore, they may be modeled as thin-walled beams. However, because of their properties of anisotropy and the high ratio between longitudinal to transverse elastic modulus, these beams have a different behavior than those made of metallic materials. Accordingly, an important amount of research was directed to the development of new theoretical and computational models for analyzing such types of structures. In this paper a refined theory for the dynamics of thin-walled curved beams made of composite materials is presented. This model is applied to the analysis of dynamic stability of this type of structures. A finite element formulation of the present theory is developed and the resulting system of differential equations is analyzed by means of the Bolotin method in order to determine the instability regions. Some numerical examples are shown.