Three-dimensional stress analysis of orthotropic curved tubes-part 2: Laminate solution

The study described in this paper (Part 2) presents a new simple-input method to study thick laminated composite curved tubes subjected to mechanical loadings. First, a displacement approach of Toroidal Elasticity was chosen to obtain the displacement field of single-layer composite curved tubes (Part 1). Then, a layerwise method is employed to develop the most general displacement field of elasticity for arbitrary laminated composite curved tubes. The principle of minimum total potential energy is applied to calculate stresses in thick composite curved tubes under pure bending moment. The accuracy of the proposed method is subsequently verified by comparing the numerical results obtained using the proposed method with finite element method (FEM), experimental data and a solution available in the literature. The results show good correspondence. Also, the proposed method provides advantages in terms of computational time compared to FEM.