Thermal postbuckling of shear deformable multiscale hybrid composite beams

Abstract

This research is deal with thermal buckling and post-buckling of carbon nanotube/fiber/polymer composite beams. The beam is considered to be under uniform temperature rise. Firstly, the effective material properties of a two phase nanocomposite consisting of CNT and polymer are extracted. Then, the modified Chamis rule is utilized to obtain the equivalent thermo-mechanical properties of multiscale hybrid composite (MHC). Based on the first order shear deformation theory, Von-Karman type of geometrically nonlinear strain-deformation equations and also the virtual work rule, the equilibrium equations of a three phace composite beam are derived. Bifurcation buckling and also the thermal post-buckling is analysed using the generalized differential quadrature technique. In the thermal buckling phenomena, a linear eigenvalue problem is solved; however, due to the nonlinearity, the thermal postbuckling study is performed using an iterative displacement control strategy. After validation study, several novel results demonstrate the influences of length-to-thickness ratio, agglomeration of applied CNTs and fibers in the composite media and number and orientation of layers on the critical temperature and displacement-loading path.