The Post-Buckling Analysis of Porous Sandwich Cylindrical Shells with Shape Memory Alloy Wires Reinforced Layers Under Mechanical Loads

The main purpose of this paper is to analyze the nonlinear post-buckling behavior of three-layer porous sandwich cylindrical shells with shape memory alloy (SMA) wires reinforced outer layers under the mechanical loads. Considering the large deformations, the governing differential equations were extracted and then, using the Ritz energy method and considering the Airy function, the analytical expression for the critical stress of the system was extracted. Three types of porosity distributions were considered in the shell core and the mechanical properties of SMA-reinforced layers were determined using the law of mixtures. After validating the results, the effect of various parameters such as porosity distribution, volume fraction of SMA wires and geometric characteristics on nonlinear buckling loads and post-buckling behavior of these structures has been investigated. According to the results, it can be seen that the difference in critical buckling stress for three different porosity distribution types is significant, which reveals the need to determine the optimal porosity distribution for composite shells reinforced with SMA wires. The results show that the SMA wires increase the equivalent stiffness of the structure and their presence has a significant effect on improving the critical axial stress of the shells. According to the results, for the use of 1% volume fraction of SMA wires, the axial stress of sandwich shells can be increased up to about 51%. Therefore, the use of SMA wires is a good method to increase the load-bearing capacity of this type of structures.