Semi-exact solution of elastic non-uniform thickness and density rotating disks by homotopy perturbation and Adomian's decomposition methods. Part I: Elastic solution

In this work, two powerful analytical methods, namely homotopy perturbation method (HPM) and Adomian's decomposition method (ADM), are introduced to obtain distributions of stresses and displacements in rotating annular elastic disks with uniform and variable thicknesses and densities. The results obtained by these methods are then compared with the verified variational iteration method (VIM) solution. He's homotopy perturbation method which does not require a “small parameter” has been used and a homotopy with an imbedding parameter p ∈ [0,1] is constructed. The method takes the full advantage of the traditional perturbation methods and the homotopy techniques and yields a very rapid convergence of the solution. Adomian's decomposition method is an iterative method which provides analytical approximate solutions in the form of an infinite power series for nonlinear equations without linearization, perturbation or discretization. Variational iteration method, on the other hand, is based on the incorporation of a general Lagrange multiplier in the construction of correction functional for the equation. This study demonstrates the ability of the methods for the solution of those complicated rotating disk cases with either no or difficult to find fairly exact solutions without the need to use commercial finite element analysis software. The comparison among these methods shows that although the numerical results are almost the same, HPM is much easier, more convenient and efficient than ADM and VIM.