EFFECT OF SHEAR DEFORMATION ON BENDING OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE BEAMS

A higher-order shear deformation beam theory is utilized to analyze the bending of thick laminated composite beams. This theory accounts for parabolic distribution of shear strain through the thickness of the beam. The predicted displacements show improvement over the Bresse-Timoshenko beam theory. Mixed finite element results are obtained for those cases where closed-form solutions are not available. The finite element and exact solutions are in close agreement. Numerical results are presented for single, two and three-layer beams under uniform and sinusoidal distributed transverse loadings.