Analysis and Parametric Investigation of Active Open Cross Section Thin Wall Beams

The static behaviour of active Open Cross Section Thin Wall Beams (OCSTWB) with embedded Active/Macro Fibre Composites (AFCs/MFCs) has been investigated for the purpose of advancing the fundamental theory needed in the development of advanced smart structures. An efficient code that can analyze active OCSTWB using analytical equations has been studied.;The calculated cross sectional stiffness constants and induced force/moments, the constitutive relation and the six intrinstic static equilibrium equations for OCSTWB were all used together in a first-order accurate forward difference scheme in order to determine the average twist and deflections along the beam span. In order to further verify the analytical code, the static behaviour of a number of beam examples was investigated using 3-D Finite Element Analysis (FEA). For a particular cross section, the rigid body twist and displacements were minimized with the displacements of all the nodes in the 3-D FEA model that compose the cross section. This was done for a number of cross sections along the beam span in order to recover the global beam twist and displacement profiles from the 3-D FEA results. The global twist and deflections predicted by the analytical code agreed closely with those predicted by UM/VABS and 3-D FEA.;The study was completed by a parametric investigation to determine the boundary conditions and the composite ply lay-ups of the active and passive plies that produce the greatest twist in an active I-beam spar using an induced bimoment. It was found that greater twist could be produced by distributing the active plies near the outer flange edges and towards the warping restrained beam root.;Various beam examples have been investigated in order to verify this recently developed analytical active OCSTWB analysis tool. The cross sectional stiffness constants and induced force, moments and bimoment predicted by this analytical code have been compared with those predicted by the 2-D finite element beam cross section analysis codes called the Variational Asymptotic Beam Sectional (VABS) analysis and the University of Michigan VABS (UM/VABS). Good agreement was observed between the results obtained from the analytical tool and VABS.