Deformation of antisymmetric laminate under centrifugal force and/or thermal load

A smart blade conception has been proposed by the authors. With stretching- twisting coupling effect, the blade is twisted by centrifugal load or ambie nt temperature change. In this paper, the blade, simplified as a cantilever ed antisymmetric laminate, is investigated by classic plate theory. An anal ytical scheme based on Rayleigh-Ritz (RR) method is proposed to calculate p late's deformation behavior. RR's analytical results are compared with FEM' s to check the present scheme's numerical accuracy. Influence of the fiber orientation angle is discussed and the angle at which the blade twists most is found. Further analysis focusing on plate's nonlinear behavior is perfo rmed. The nonlinearity, originated with large out-plane deflection, influen ces the plate in two aspects: large-strain and follower force. These aspect s are discussed separately in the analysis, by introducing quadric terms in to strain and virtual work expressions. It is shown that for the present mo del, nonlinear influence must be considered at 10,000 rpm rotation speed lo ading, but is negligible at temperature-load below 120 K. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.