Generalization of the C0-type zigzag theory for accurate thermomechanical analysis of laminated composites

A new method based on the C0-type efficient higher-order zigzag theory (EHOZT) is proposed for the efficient and accurate thermomechanical analysis of laminated composite plates. In this method, the transverse shear strain energy is modified according to the mixed variational theorem (MVT). The transverse stress field is defined by the arbitrary m-th order zigzag model including the transverse normal strain effect to improve the accuracy, while the displacement field is obtained from the C0-type EHOZT to amplify the benefits of the numerical efficiency. The transverse displacement field is assumed to be a smooth parabolic distribution to consider the transverse normal strain effect, which has a significant role in predicting the thermal deformation. Derivative components of the transverse displacement field are eliminated from the in-plane displacement field of the C0-type EHOZT by the transverse shear stress condition. The resulting strain energy expressions are collectively referred to as the C0-type EHOZT via the MVT. The proposed theory has the computational advantage of utilizing the C0-continuity condition for finite element implementation while allowing local distributions of the transverse stress to be improved via the recovery procedure. The obtained displacements and stress distributions were compared with data available in the literature for validation.