Thermo-mechanical coupled behavior of laminated beams with temperature-dependent viscoelastic interlayers

The present research proposes analytical solutions of simply-supported laminated beams bonded by viscoelastic interlayers under both non-uniform temperature field and mechanical loads, in order to study its time-varying thermo-mechanical coupled behavior. The temperature has two effect mechanisms to the laminated beams, including the thermal expansion difference and the temperature-dependent property of viscoelastic interlayer. In the analytical model, the non-uniform temperature field is solved first by the transfer matrix method, based on the heat transport theory. The standard linear solid model is utilized to simulate the time-varying characteristic of the interlayer, which renders the mechanical property of the laminated beam changes over time. Then, the temperature effects on the interlayer modulus degradation are determined according to the Time-Temperature-Superposition-Principle (TTSP). By virtue of the state space method and Fourier series expansion, the general solutions of stress and displacement components are solved with undetermined coefficients. The analytical solutions are solved by means of Laplace transform and Cramer rule. The analysis results indicate that the present solutions are in accordance with the finite element solution and have superior computational efficiency. The influences of temperature, geometric and material parameters on the long-term thermo-mechanical coupled behavior of the laminated beam are studied in detail.