FREE VIBRATION OF COMPOSITE BOX-BEAMS BY ANSYS.

M. Gkhan GNAY and Taner TIMARCI Trakya University, Mechanical Engineering Department, Edirne, Turkey.
Abstract Natural frequencies and mode shapes of CUS (circumferentially uniform stifnesss) and CAS (circumferentially asimetric stifnesss) laminated cantilever box-beams are found by use of a finite element analysis package, ANSYS. The applicability of ANSYS for analyzing the vibration of composite box-beams are validated by comparing the numerical results with the ones obtained on the basis of the analytical and other finite elements techniques available in the literature. The effects of the symmetries and the fibre orientation angle changes in the lamination on the vibration characteristics of the beams are investigated. Keywords: composite box-beams, vibration, ANSYS.

INTRODUCTION The thinwalled box-beams made of the fiberreinforced composite materials are used extensively in many engineering applications because of their good mechanical properties, such as high strength and stiffness to weight ratios. Composite materials can be tailored to provide the certain design requirements. There are many articles published in order to understand the dynamical behaviour of the composite box-beams. Chandra and Chopra [1] investigated the vibration characteristics of rotating composite box-beams. They solved the governing equations by Galerkin Method and compared the results with the ones of a test facility for symmetric and antisymmetric beams. Dancila and Armanios [2] presented a solution procedure for the vibration problem of the slender composite box-beams having two types of configurations resulting (CUS and CAS cases) in extension-twist and bending-twist couplings. The non-classical effects are incorporated in the thin-walled boxbeams models by the approach of Qin and Librescu [3]. They used Extended Galerkins Method for the solution of the static and vibration problem of the beams. Shamedri et al. [4] also included the nonclasical effects in their work on the investigation of static and dynamic behaviour of composite box-beams. Vo and Lee [5], based on the the classical lamination theory, derived the equations of the motion of composite box beam for arbitrary laminate confguration by Hamiltons principle

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INTERNATIONAL SCIENTIFIC CONFERENCE 16 17 November 2012, GABROVO

and they solved these equations by applying displacement-based one dimensional finite element model. As can be seen from the previous works, the analitical approaches need to realize very cumbersome calculations especially when the non classical effects are considered. In this study, in order to understand the capability of a finite element package, ANSYS, it has been attempted to obtain the natural frequencies and mode shapes by use of this package. The numerical results were compared with the ones available in the literature. THE FORMULATION The geometry of the box-beam and the coordinate system is shown in the Figure 1 while Figure 2 shows CUS (circumferentially uniform stifnesss) and CAS (circumferentially asimetric stifnesss) configurations. In general, two coordinate systems which are related to each other, are required in order to describe the behaviour of the beam (Fig.1). For comparison reasons, the model presented in the work of Qin and Librescu [3] is presented briefly in this section. In analysis, it is assummed that the cross-section of the beam does not deform in its own plane and the deformations are small. It may be referred for the other assumptions to the previous articles [3,5] depending on the inclusions of the nonclassical effects, such as transverse shear.

(1)

Fig. 1. The geometry of the beam and coordinate systems

Warping function Fw is defined again in Ref [3-4]. (.) and (.),s denote the derivatives with respect to z and s respectively. After having applied Hamiltons Principle, the governing equations for CAS case where they involve three unknowns, v0, , x, corresponding to the vertical bending, twist and transverse shear, from Ref. [4] are as follows:

Lay-Up Flanges Top Bottom CAS CUS *+6 *+6 [-+6 *+6

Webs Left **+6

Right *+6

*/-+3 */-+3

Here, global stifness coefficients aij and inertia coefficients bi are given in Ref. [4]. In the study mentioned, although state of stress can be split into vertical bending, twist, transverse shear, there are couplings of extension-twist and bending-shear in CUS case while in CAS case extension-transverse shear and bending-twist couplings, in general. SOLUTION BY ANSYS ANSYS is a finite element modeling package for numerically solving various structural problems. The more details and tutorials can be found in [6,7] In the study presented, the natural frequencies and mode shapes are obtained for cantilever beams for antisymetric and symmetric configurations by use of ANSYS. In the analysis SHELL281 8-node element was used. In this modeling, the first order shear deformation theory is adopted for layered composite structure applications. It may be referred to Ref.[8] for different shear deformable models. The numerical results are compared with the ones presented in the works of Chandra and Chopra [1] and Qin and

Fig. 2. Symmetric and antisymmetric configurations

The displacement field as given in [3] is:

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Librescu [3] where the solutions are obtained by experimental and numerical methods, respectively. The same results are also available in [5]. In Table 1 the configurations corresponding to the different lay-ups are presented. The values of the natural frequencies obtained for these certain configurations and the relative errors with respect to the ones of the previous works are given in Table 2. As seen from this table the results give very reasonable values especially for the compared numerical values obtained numerically in Ref [4], by Extended Galerkins method except for the case CAS2 for which there is a difference about 9.5 %.
Table 1. Material properties for CAS and CUS cases.
E11=141.96 GPa G23= 4.83 GPa 12= 13= 0.42 , E22= E33=9.79 GPa G12= G13= 6 GPa 23=0.5, =1445 kg/m
3

Table 4. The comparison of the frequencies (Hz) for the certain lay-ups and modes with previous works.
Mode Ref[3] Ref[4] ANSYS Er(%) Er(%) Ref[3] Ref[4] CAS2 y1 y2 x1 y1 y2 x1 y1 y1 20.96 128.36 38.06 16.67 96.15 29.48 28.66 30.66 30.00 21.80 123.28 15.04 92.39 30.06 34.58 32.64 19.73 123.32 37.53 14.58 91.23 25.01 28.37 34.29 32.35 -5.87 -3.93 -1.39 -12.54 -5.12 -15.16 -1.01 11.84 7.83 -9.50 0.03 -3.06 -1.26 -5.62 -0.84 -0.89

CAS3

CUS1 CUS2 Y1 CUS3

R-Er %=(ANS-Ref)]X100/Ref. %

Table 5. The natural frequencies for CAS beam with respect to the fiber angle change.
Fiber Angle () 0 10 20 30 40 50 60 70 80 90 y1 (Hz) 43,246 35,393 26,001 19,731 15,834 13,628 12,440 11,827 11,542 11,459 y2 (Hz) 256,430 216,600 161,860 123,320 99,050 85,256 77,801 73,931 72,078 71,484 x1 (Hz) 68,075 61,538 49,969 37,530 28,133 22,722 20,000 18,729 18,192 18,046 x2 (Hz) 402,570 372,250 307,890 233,150 175,320 141,730 124,750 116,780 113,390 112,450

Table 2. Geometrical properties of the Box-beams

L 2b 2a h 2n (length) (Outer width) ( Outer depth) (thickness) ( number of layers) ( Layer thick.) 762 mm 24.2 mm 13.6 mm 0.762 mm 6 0.127 mm

Table 3. The lay-ups used for comparison with previous works.

Lay-Up Flanges CAS2 CAS3 CUS1 CUS2 CUS3 Top [30]6 [45]6 [15]6 [0/30]3 Bottom [-30]6 [-45]6 [15]6 [0/30]3 Webs Left [30/-30]3 [45/-45]3 [15]6 [0/30]3 [0/45]3 Right [30/-30]3 [45/-45]3 [15]6 [0/30]3 [0/45]3

As seen from this Table, the fundamental frequency belongs to the bending mode in vertical direction, y. Table 5 and 6 show the effect of the increase of number of the layers by keeping the layer thickness constant on the frequencies for CAS2 and CUS beams respectively.
Table 6. The natural frequencies for CAS (=300) beam with respect to the number of layers.
Layer Count (2n) 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 y1 (Hz) y2 (Hz) 19,692 19,731 19,759 19,762 19,724 19,681 19,645 19,617 19,600 123,040 123,320 123,510 123,540 123,300 123,030 122,800 122,630 122,520 x1 (Hz) x2 (Hz) 37,513 37,530 37,541 37,376 37,039 36,668 36,307 35,972 35,666 233,020 233,150 233,230 232,130 230,000 227,690 225,460 223,380 221,490 0 (Hz) 680,100 693,326 698,429 687,940 678,393 670,297 633,610 658,170 653,799

[0/45]3 [0/45]3

We can say that the ANSYS results are generally lower than the experimental ones, except for the CUS2-3beams. After having validated the results obtained by ANSYS, in Table 5, the variation of the first two natural frequencies corresponding to the x and y directions with respect to the fibre orientation angle for CAS lay-up is presented.

As can be observed from these tables, as the number of layers are increased the values of

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frequencies decrease slightly for CAS case while they increase for CUS case. Table 7. The natural frequencies for [30]2n (CUS) beam with respect to the number of layers.
Layer Count (2n) 4 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 y1 (Hz) y2 (Hz) 18,225 18,240 18,260 18,285 18,314 18,349 18,387 18,430 18,477 113,780 113,900 114,040 114,200 114,390 114,610 114,850 115,130 115,420 x1 (Hz) x2 (Hz) 28,786 28,795 28,806 28,819 28,834 28,850 28,869 28,889 28,910 178,830 178,900 178,980 179,070 179,180 179,300 179,430 179,570 179,720 0 (Hz) 510,925 516,271 519,334 522,070 524,850 527,792 530,919 534,222 537,680
(Hz)

CAS CUS 60

50

x1

40

30

20

10

10

20

30

40 50 Fiber Angle ( )

60

70

80

90

Fig. 4. The change of the frequencies with respect to fiber angles for CAS and CUS cases

In Fig.3 the output for the first eight frequencies of CAS2 lay-up is presented.

Figures 5 and 6 are the mode shapes of the box-beam corresponding to the first and second modes in y-direction respectively. As shown from the figures, there is also extensional displacement in z-direction coupled to the displacement in y-direction.
1
NODAL SOLUTION STEP=1 SUB =1 FREQ=19.731 USUM (AVG) RSYS=0 DMX =7.7 SMN =.420E-07 SMX =7.7 SEP 18 2012 11:16:26

Y Z X
MN

MX

.420E-07

.855553

1.711

2.567

3.422

4.278

5.133

5.989

6.844

7.7

Fig. 5. The mode shape for y1= 19.73 Hz of

CAS2 beam.
1
NODAL SOLUTION STEP=1 SUB =3 FREQ=123.322 USUM (AVG) RSYS=0 DMX =7.7 SMN =.233E-06 SMX =7.7 SEP 18 2012 11:16:57

Fig. 3. The ANSYS output of the frequencies for CAS2 beam.

natural

Y Z X
MN

In Fig.4. the variations of the natural frequencies of CAS and CUS cases corresponding to the x-direction, with respect to the fiber orientation angle are shown. As shown from the figure, the frequencies decrease sharply from 00 to 600 while the values of CUS case are higher than the ones of CAS case.
.233E-06

MX

.855561

1.711

2.567

3.422

4.278

5.133

5.989

6.844

7.7

Fig.6. The mode shape for y2= 123.32 Hz of

CAS2 beam.

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CONCLUSION This is a preliminary study to understand the dynamic behavior of composite box-beam realized by use of ANSYS finite element package. It can be observed from the results, ANSYS results are in quite reasonable limits compared with ones of previous works. The study based on the ANSYS can be extended to the static analysis of composite box-beams with different boundary and loading conditions. REFERENCES 1-Chadra R., Chopra I. ExperimentalTheoretical Investigation of the vibration characteristics of rotating box-beams. J. of Aircraft, 29:4, 657-664, 1992. 2- Dancilia DS, Armanios EA. The influence of coupling on the free vibration of anisotropic thin-walled closed section beams. Int J Solid structures 35:( 23) 3105-3119, 1998.

3-Qin Z, Librescu L. On a shear- deformable theory of anisotropic thin walled beams: further contribution and contribution. Composite Structures 56:345-358, 2002. 4-Shadmehri F, Haddadpour H, Kouchakzadeh MA Flexural-torsional behavior thin walled composite beams with closed cross-section, Thin-Walled Structures 45: 699705, 2007. 5- Vo TP, Lee J. Free vibration of thin-walled composite box beams. Composite Structures 84:11-20, 2008. 6- http://www.ansys.com/ 7- www.mece.ualberta.ca/tutorials/ansys 8- Karacam F, Timarc T. Bending of crossply beams with different boundary conditions. UNITECH-05, Gabrovo, Bulgaria. Proceedings of Int. Scient. Conference II:137-142, 2005.

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