Coupled thermo-mechanical analysis of one-layered and multilayered plates

The paper considers a fully coupled thermo-mechanical analysis of one-layered and multilayered isotropic and composite plates. In the proposed analysis, the temperature is considered a primary variable as the displacement; it is therefore directly obtained from the model and this feature permits the temperature field to be evaluated through the thickness direction in three different cases: - static analysis with imposed temperature on the external surfaces; - static analysis of structures subjected to a mechanical load, with the possibility of considering the temperature field effects; - a free vibration problem, with the evaluation of the temperature field effects. In the first case, imposing a temperature at the top and bottom of the plate, the static response is given in term of displacements, stresses and temperature field; the proposed method is very promising if compared to a partially coupled thermo-mechanical analysis, where the temperature is only considered as an external load, and the temperature profile must be a priori defined: considering it linear through the thickness direction or calculating it by solving the Fourier heat conduction equation. In the second case, a mechanical load is applied. The fully coupled thermo-mechanical analysis gives smaller displacement values than those obtained with the pure mechanical analysis; the temperature effect is not considered in this latter approach. The third case is the free vibration problem. The fully coupled thermo-mechanical analysis permits the effect of the temperature field to be evaluated: larger frequencies are obtained with respect to the pure mechanical analysis. Carrera's Unified Formulation is applied to obtain several refined models with orders of expansion in the thickness direction, from linear to fourth-order, for displacements and temperature. Both equivalent single layer and layer wise approaches are considered for the multilayered plates. At present, no benchmarks are available within the framework of a fully coupled theory. This work aims to fill this gap. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.