Jordan canonical form solution for thermally induced deformations of cross-ply laminated composite beams

Abstract

Thermal deformations in symmetric and antisymmetric cross-ply beams are investigated. The state-space approach in conjunction with the Jordan canonical form is presented to obtain exact solutions for the thermoelastic response of cross-ply composite beams for arbitrary boundary conditions and subjected to general temperature fields. The classical, first-, second-, and third-order beam theories are used in the analysis. As a demonstrative example, deflections are computed for beams with various lamination schemes and boundary conditions undergoing linearly varying temperature through the thickness.