Analysis of elastically coupled thick-walled composite blades

✍ Scribed by Ori Rappel; Omri Rand

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 2000
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 608 KB
• Volume: 37
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0020-7683
• DOI: 10.1016/s0020-7683(99)00109-2

✦ Synopsis

A formulation for thick-walled composite blades is devised and implemented numerically. A parametric study which is focused on the in¯uence of wall thickness on the structural behavior of blades, with an emphasize on the elastic couplings induced by composite materials is also presented. In contrast with models for thin-walled blades, the shear stresses perpendicular to the local wall direction are accounted for. The numerical solution is based on a ®nite-dierence scheme where the displacement ®eld is described by four global displacements for each cross-section and an out-of-plane warping function for each material point. Overall, the solution procedure employs an iterative scheme that enables the inclusion of a large number of independent variables. The results reveal and demonstrate the discrepancies between thick-walled modeling and thin-walled modeling as functions of the wall thickness for various loading modes, and supply a clear indication of regions where employing a thick-walled model is inevitable.