A Thermal Viscoelastic Analysis for Thick-Walled Composite Cylinders

The thermal viscoelastic behavior of thick-walled composite cylinders has been investigated. The analysis accounts for ply-by-ply variations of material properties, fiber orientations, and temperature changes. The Correspondence Principle is employed to convert the thermoviscoelastic problem to its corresponding thermoelasticity problem in Laplace transform space. A closed-form formulation is then developed for each layer, assuming a state of generalized plane strain, to solve for a general solution of the corresponding thermoelastic problem. A numerical method with implementation of parallel computing techniques was used to resolve the complex and large numerical system resulting from thick multi-ply cylinders. Finally, direct Laplace transform inversion is used to yield the quasi-static thermoviscoelastic solution.