Development and implementation of non-linear physical models for reinforced plates and shells analysis, developing small and large displacements

Abstract

This project is related to the study of laminated plates and shells (including bars) developing both small and large displacements and using the Reissner-Timoshenko kinematics for which the cross sections remain straight but not normal to the reference surface (or line). It involves the improvement of results related transverse stress components, as the other components have very good behavior and have been tested before by previous researches of this group. When one is leading with laminated plates and shells the failure mode may occurs by delamination. This mode is mainly determined by the transverse stress distribution that is not well described by the existent formulation. Studies related to the improvement of this stress distribution and the strategy of implementation will be carried out and used to ensure good information for the proposed damage mechanics and plasticity strategies. The first ruin to be approached is the so called intralaminar failure, the delamination formulation will be developed in future works.Another important subject of this Project is the consideration of fibers immersed in the laminated plates and shells. A lot of materials are constituted of laminas reinforced by fibers, and an objective of this work is to include fibers inside laminas without introducing additional degrees of freedom. The fiber coupling with matrix material that is developing loss of strength (damage or plasticity) will be also implemented and, it is expected, that matrix softening will be appropriated modeled in this situation. (AU)