Finite element analysis of the influence of temperature profile on thermoelasticity of multilayered plates

This paper presents various finite plate elements for the thermal stress analysis of multilayered anisotropic structures, plates for various thickness ratio values. The objective of this paper is to investigate the influence of the temperature description through the thickness of laminated plates. Assumptions are made for the displacement fields in thickness direction and the principle of virtual displacements (PVD) is employed to derive finite element (FE) matrices. A unified formulation is employed so the FE matrices have been derived in terms of few fundamental nuclei which form is not affected by: the number of the nodes of the elements and the order of the expansion of the assumption made for the displacements-variable description (Layer-Wise, LW, and Equivalent-Single, Layer ESL, cases are both addressed). Two different profiles of temperature have been compared on cross-ply laminates: (1) the linear one; (2) the actual profile obtained by solving the heat conduction problem. Comparison to closed form solutions as well as to available 3D exact analyses have shown the effectiveness of the proposed elements and their capability to trace quasi 3D description of thermal stresses in layered plates.