Buckling Analysis of Twisted Cantilever FGM Plates with and Without Cut-OutS.

Abstract

The use and applications of composites are expanding these days.Due to light weight,high specific strength and stiffness,composite materials are being widely used as a part of wind turbine blades and ship building.For high temperature applications,Functionally Graded Materials (FGM) are preferred over laminated composites because of its good performance in the thermal field.Chopper blades, turbine cutting blades,marine propellers,compressor blades, fan shape blades,and mostly gas turbines use pre-twisted cantilever plates.Often they are subjected to thermal environments,and thus FGMs are a decent option to metal plates.Composite structures with cut-outs are usually employed in engineering structures.In structural components cut-outs are provided sometimes to lighten the structure and for proper ventilation.Cut-outs in aircraft components (for example,fuselage,ribs and wing spar) are required for inspection,access,fuel lines and electric lines or to minimize the general weight of the aircraft.Study of buckling of cantilever twisted functionally graded material plates with and without holes and with varying applied in-plane loads is dealt in the present work.The analysis is carried out by using ANSYS.An element having six degrees of freedom per node SHELL-281 is used.The FGM plate is assumed to be a laminated section containing a number of layers with a steady variation of the material property through the thickness,where each layer is taken as isotropic. Material properties in each layer are determined using power law.Results obtained from convergence studies, carried out by using 12 number of layers and 12 by 12 mesh, are found to be quite accurate.Buckling behavior of cantilever twisted FGM plates with and without cut-outs and for different non-uniform applied in-plane loads are studied for the effect of various parameters like material gradient index,aspect ratio, side to thickness ratio, diameter of cut-outs and twist angle.