Bending and buckling of general laminated curved beams using NURBS-based isogeometric analysis

• We present an isogeometric model for bending and buckling of laminated deep curved beams with arbitrary lay-up and curvature.
• We examine the maximum deflection for laminated circular and elliptic curved beams.
• We investigate the buckling behaviour of laminated circular and parabolic curved beams.
• The buckling mode transition is reported for laminated circular and parabolic curved beams.
• The effect of various parameters on the maximum buckling load of parabolic curved beams is shown.

In this paper, the bending and buckling analyses of shear deformable laminated composite curved beams with arbitrary lay-up and curvature are presented based on the NURBS-based isogeometric approach. The equivalent modulus of elasticity is utilized to account for all the material couplings in laminated composite curved beams and the deepness term is exactly integrated into laminate stiffness parameters. The displacement field, geometry and curvature are all together modelled by NURBS. Results of the non-dimensional maximum deflection and the non-dimensional critical buckling load are compared with other available results in order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed isogeometric analysis framework. The buckling response of laminated circular beams under uniform compression and parabolic curved beams subjected to a vertical load uniformly distributed along the span is investigated. The buckling mode transition phenomenon is exhibited for both types of curved beams.