Transverse elastic response of bundled coated cylinders

• Initial elastic moduli of coated tubular bundle in hexagonal, diagonal and square arrays are studied.
• Effect of relative thickness and moduli contrast between coating and substrate is studied.
• Elasticity solution, with inter-ring stress distribution, for thick coated tubular bundles in square array.
• Results corroborated with FE simulations and supplemented with results from thin ring theory for limiting cases.

The overall elastic response of a bundle of coated cylinders is a major aspect of thermal, nuclear and automotive engineering designs. This paper extends the previous work on tubular bundles to assess the effect of coating material and thickness. A major contribution from this paper is determining the overall transverse elastic response of coated thick cylinders by extending the Michell stress function approach in conjunction with contact mechanics. Finite element results using contact elements pave the way for applying the contact stress boundary conditions for Michell analysis. Theoretical and finite element analyses overall give results consistent with the previous work, and the results also fall within the well-established Voigt–Reuss bounds.