Assessment of beam modeling methods for rotor blade applications

There is no lack of composite beam theories. Quite to the contrary, there m ight be too many of them. Different approaches, notation, etc., are used by the authors of those theories, so it is not always straightforward to comp are the assumptions made and to assess the quantitative consequences of tho se assumptions. Moreover, there is a serious lack of experimental results a nd benchmark problems. As a result, one finds that most theories perform ab out equally well on the few extant benchmark problems. This can obscure dif ferences among theories and simultaneously create the false expectation tha t a specific theory will perform as well in all cases. The goal of this pap er is to attempt to objectively assess theories within a common framework. The validity and relative importance of various assumptions that are presen t in the literature are discussed. It is hoped that this will be a first st ep toward the clearly desirable situation in which an engineer can safely a nd easily choose a composite beam theory based on tile type of application and specific needs for fidelity. (C) 2001 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.