Thin Walled Composite Beam Structure Under Bending

Abstract

Although the analysis of beams made of metallic isotopic materials is well developed and documented, less information is available on the analysis of layered composite beams under bending. In the present work, a procedure was developed to analyze single cell closed section and open section made from an assembly of flat layered fibrous composite under symmetric bending. The analysis is based on symmetric laminates for each flat segment of a thin-walled section. For the validation of the presented analysis, a model was constructed with thin-walled open cross section of "C" shape. The model was tested under bending moment and experimental strain measurements were performed. The results are compared with the theoretical analysis. The comparison shows that the presented approach gives results in a good agreement with the experimental measurements.