Finite element analysis of hygrothermal effects on angle-ply composite plates

Analytical and numerical results on transverse shear stresses of angle-ply composite plates subjected to hygrothermal loadings are scarce in literature. Thus, a higher order global-local model a priori satisfying the continuity condition of transverse shear stresses is proposed for hygrothermal analysis of angel-ply composite plates. Based on the higher order global-local model, a triangular element is developed by using the refined element approach. Comparing the results from available three-dimensional elasticity solution, the proposed model can produce promising transverse shear stresses directly from constitutive equations without any smoothing technique. By analyzing hygrothermal response of composite plates with general configurations, the effects of material properties, lamination angles, boundary conditions, transverse normal strain, and hygrothermal expansion coefficients on the hygrothermal response have also been studied. Differing from previous work, the corrected hygrothermal expansion coefficients are used for hygrothermal analysis of composite plates.