Moorthy et al, International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN2249–8974

Research Paper
FINITE ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF GRID STIFFENED
COMPOSITE STRUCTURE OF UNDER WATER VEHICLE
G.Moorthy, Dr. H.N. Narasimha Murthy, Dr. M. Krishna

Address for Correspondence

Department of Mechanical Engineering, R.V.College of Engineering, Bangalore, India
ABSTRACT
The most important property required in any structural material is high strength to weight ratio, hence composite materials
gained greater interest in the structural field. The body of the UAV (Unmanned Aerial Vehicle) and UUV (Unmanned
Underwater Vehicle) are cylindrical shells which are subjected to different kinds of loads when they are travelling in their
respective medium. In UUV due to high external hydrostatic pressure the buckling failures are noticed frequently. The
filament winding techniques are most commonly explored for fabricating the body of the UUV structure, the filament
winding techniques are controlled by various parameters such as layer thickness, resin-fiber ratio, aspect ratio, material
properties, winding angle etc. these parameters should be varied to get the desired properties. In this paper we have
considered the cylinder with grid stiffened and the results are compared with the cylinder without grid stiffened and also the
results are checked for different shell thickness. These analyses are carried out for preferred UUV structural materials that
are Glass fiber and Epoxy resin based composites.
KEY WORDS: Unmanned Underwater Vehicle (UUV), Finite element analysis (FEA), Filament winding technique,
stiffened cylinder
1. INTRODUCTION hydrostatic pressure [6]. Previous numerical and
In the past, UUV started to be developed in order to experimental studies performed have shown that
accomplish minor roles in places where diver's work failure due to structural buckling is the major risk
was impossible or just for general scientific research. factor for thin laminated cylinders [6]. The calculated
Recently, however, such vehicles have various uses and experimental buckling modes of the lengthy
in the development of deep-sea resources, the vessels are characterized by one longitudinal half-
installation or repair of communication lines or wave and type-2 or type-3 circumferential half-
rescue work, etc. An UUV is composed of a frame, waves. From the literature review it is observed that
buoyant material, control and navigation devices, the optimization of ply angles in order to maximize
manipulators and pressure vessels which are able to the buckling loads could take advantage of the
protect the various electronic devices. Among the potential of fiber reinforced materials allowing the
structural elements of UUVs, especially, the frame properties of the laminate to be tailored to the
and the pressure vessels must have thorough safety application [9–11].
investigation through structural analysis before The classical lamination theory is utilized to
construction, because the structural safety of UUV is determine the lamina stresses for thin laminates
affected by the weight of the electronic devices, their subjected to force and moment resultant. It is well
location, their size, static or kinetic loads and deep- accepted that the classical two dimensional
sea pressure. lamination shell theory, as applied to laminated
The unmanned underwater vehicle structure is composite construction leads to fairly accurate
primarily subjected to compressive loads due to estimates for displacement, stresses, strains, buckling
hydrostatic external pressure which varies with the loads, vibration frequencies, etc. of thin laminate. But
depth of the sea at which the vehicle travels. most of the present days advanced composites have
Different problems can arise depending on the low transverse shear moduli and therefore, transverse
employed material and their properties like shear deformation is a vital role in the kinematics of
magnetism of steel, cost of titanium, corrosion of composite laminated shell than in homogeneous
aluminum and weight of any metal that is used [1, metallic ones. Further more in order to achieve the
2]. Composite materials avoids many drawbacks of same strength as metals in UUV application we need
conventional materials and have other attractive to use thicker walls which in turn reduces the ratio of
aspects like the relatively high compressive strength, the smallest initial radius of curvature to total
the good adaptability in fabricating thick composite thickness. This leads to the difference in thick and
shells, low weight and the corrosion resistance. thin shells. So predicting the response of composite
On the other hand the material characterization and thick laminated shells, then we must remove the
failure analysis of thick composite materials in classical assumption of normal remain normal and
compression is still an item of research [3]. include the shear deformation in connection with
Cylindrical, spherical and conical shells, which are transverse direction.
common geometries in submarine shells, are ideal The objective of this paper is to present some aspects
shapes in responding to external pressure. When related to the determination of the buckling strength
compressive stresses generated by the external of medium thick composite shells subjected to
pressure reach elevated levels buckling phenomena external pressure. An investigation based on
become dominant. The research on buckling of shells numerical results is illustrated with reference to a
has been carried out over many years with particular specific model of an under-water vehicle. Numerical
attention to isotropic materials [4, 5], these composite studies were performed to determine the nature of a
tubes are carbon reinforced or glass reinforced epoxy possible collapse considering both material failure
resin structures obtained by the filament-winding and elastic shell buckling. When it was stated the
process [7, 8]. cylindrical central part was the most critical
The composite cylindrical vessels for underwater component subject to possible elastic buckling,
applications are intended to operate at high external additional grid stiffness were considered to increase
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 Moorthy et al, International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Studies E-ISSN2249–8974

the strength of the shell. Thus, an attempt has been Table 3.1.1 represents the results obtained by using
made in this paper to model and analyze a typical laminates of thickness varying from 3.5 mm to 6.5
UUV structure for buckling with inclusion of mm. We observe that the critical buckling pressure
transverse shear deformation using FEA. increases as the thickness of the lamina increases.
2. SHELL MODELING CONSIDERATIONS The increase in thickness of the shell requires extra
A geometrical model of the UUV structure with a material which is not economical and that would also
central cylindrical part and two end closures of a half lead to increase in weight to the UUV structure. Here
sphere and a conical structure but here we considered critical buckling pressure is predicted through Finite
only the cylindrical part because that prone more to element analysis, the Critical Buckling Pressure
the buckling. The cylindrical shell is considered to be values for the model with 3.5 mm and 6.5 mm
made up of 10 to 15 plies with the main direction thickness is shown in Fig: 3.1.2
coincident with the hoop direction. The material Table 3.1.1: Critical Buckling Pressure values for
properties considered in this study is shown in Table unstiffened cylinder-Glass/Epoxy
2.1 for a fibre to resin ratio of 70:30 [3]. The
Material considered here is orthotropic in nature; the
model is discritised using Shell 99 elements and the
resultant meshed model consisting of around 3000
shell elements. In the buckling analysis the model has
been solved for the Eigen values that are scale factors
that multiply the applied load in order to produce the
critical buckling load. In general, the lowest buckling
order is of interest, since the structure will fail before
reaching the higher order buckling loads. Hence only
the lowest Eigen value has been computed.
Table 2.1 Orthotropic Mechanical Properties of Glass/
Epoxy Composites

Fig: 3.1.2 Analysis of Cylindrical Shell without Stiffener

3. ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE CYLINDRICAL
SHELL
Middle part of the UUV model is cylindrical shell
which is more prone to buckling has been considered
to include small stiffener ring for the analysis. The
thickness of a ring stiffener has been varied from
3.5mm to 6.5mm and width 5mm or more. Many
such stiffeners are added throughout the length of the
cylindrical part, two ends of the cylinder are
constrained and external pressure of 1 MPa is applied
for the Glass /Epoxy system.
3.1 ANALYSIS OF SHELL WITHOUT
STIFFENER
Fig. 3.1.1 shows the cylindrical model which
indicates the central part of the UUV structure. The
model is subjected to various kinds of pressure to
analyze its critical buckling pressure. The table 3.1
shows the details of the shell dimensions, applied
load and the critical pressure obtained from the
analysis. The results are obtained by using laminates
of thickness varying from 3.5 mm to 6.5 mm,
keeping the other parameters such as the number of
layers, thickness of each lamina and applied pressure
constant. From the result it can be concluded that the
critical buckling pressure increases as the thickness
of the lamina increases, but the increase in material
thickness increases the weight of the shell hence
increasing the strength by varying the thickness is not
economical. The variation of critical pressure for
varying thickness is shown in comparison with ring
stiffness.
for Different Thickness
3.2 Analysis of Shell with Stiffener
Fig. 3.2.1 shows the cylindrical model with stiffener
which indicates the central part of the UUV structure.
The model is subjected to various kinds of pressure to
analyze its critical buckling pressure. The Table 3.2.1
represents the results obtained by using stiffners to
support the laminates. The number of laminates used
has been reduced from 10 to 2 and 8 layers of
uniformly spaced stiffners are added for improving
the strength. Since the width of stiffners used is much
lower compared to complete laminates, the amount of
material used also is reduced considerably saving on
cost and weight of the equipment. Here critical
buckling pressure is predicted through Finite element
analysis for the stacking sequence [55/-55]N by
varying the thickness of the model and sample
analysis of the shell and its corresponding critical
buckling pressure is shown in Fig: 3.2.2.
Fig: 3.2.1 Cylindrical Part of UUV Structure- Stiffened
Table 3.2.1 Critical Buckling Pressure values for Ring
Stiffened Cylinder- Glass/Epoxy

Fig. 3.1.1 Cylindrical Part of UUV Structure

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 Moorthy et al, International Journal of Advanced Engineering Research and Studies
Fig: 3.2.2 Analysis of Cylindrical Shell with Stiffener for
Different Thickness
4. COMPARISION OF RESULT
The Fig: 4.1 shows the comparison of the critical
buckling pressure of ring stiffened and unstiffened
cylinders. It can be clearly seen that for the same
lamina thickness, a stiffened cylinder is much
stronger than a normal unstiffened cylinder. Thus by
means of ring stiffening the cost is reduced
considerably using less material. Manufacturing costs
are more or less the same but maintenance costs goes
down drastically since the cylinder is stronger. Thus
greater depths can be reached without having to come
back for any kind of repair. The ring type stiffener is
cheaper than other types of reinforcements since the
manufacturing of the ring cage is much simpler and
assembly is cheap.
Fig: 4.1 Comparison of Unstiffened and stiffened Shell
Structure for Different Thickness
Fig: 4.2 and Fig: 4.3 show the FEM analysis of
cylindrical shell without and with stiffener
respectively. In the Fig: 4.1 the buckling pressure at
the center of the cylindrical shell is maximum i.e.,
8.68 MPa for 6.5 mm thickness, similarly the
buckling pressure of stiffened cylinder is 15.79 MPa
for 6.5 mm thickness. From this result it can be
concluded that with ring stiffener the strength of the
UUV structure can be increased to a higher extent.
Glass/epoxy showing buckling mode shape for
cylindrical shell without stiffener
Front view Top view
Fig: 4.2 Numerical Analysis of Shell without Stiffener
Glass/epoxy showing buckling mode shape for
cylindrical shell with stiffener
Front view Top view
Fig: 4.3 Numerical Analysis of Shell without Stiffener
IJAERS/Vol. II/ Issue I/Oct.-Dec.,2012/151-153
E-ISSN2249–8974
CONCLUSIONS:
In this paper, analysis of the critical buckling
pressure of ring stiffened and unstiffened cylinders
have been carried out based on hydrostatic pressure.
It has been found that for the same lamina thickness,
a stiffened cylinder is much stronger than a normal
unstiffened cylinder. The cost incurred for the ring
stiffness can be avoided by reducing the thickness of
shell mateiral and also the ring type stiffener is
cheaper than other types of reinforcements because
the manufacturing of the ring cage and its assembly is
much easier. By this method it can be concluded that
the ring stiffened sturcture of the UUV can reach to
higher depth without any repair and maintenance.
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