Analysis of the lay-up effect on the cured shapes of bistable composite plates

Bistable structures, a type of highly geometrically nonlinear morphing structures, which have two stableconfigurations and can remain in their respective equilibrium shapes without the continuous application of anexternal load. In additions, those can change their shapes by receiving suitable forces. In this paper, bistablesquare composite plates with cross ply, angle ply stacking sequences as well as combinations of them arestudied. A combination of the Rayleigh-Ritz method and the principle of minimization of potential energy areused to determine the stable configurations the structures. In this research, in order to eliminate the weaknessesof the Hyer’s shape functions, a new form of shape functions for displacement fields is proposed. These shapedfunctions considerably improve the accuracy of the estimation of out-of-plane displacement in corners, edgesand curvature of stable states. In the following, the curvature value will be obtained in each stable state for thestable state for bistable composite plates with the lay-up that was mentioned. Finally, the effect of the suggestedshape functions on improving the edge effects will be investigated. In this research, the results are validatedusing finite element method using Abaqus software and are compared with previous studies, showing that theresults have acceptable accuracy.

Analysis of the lay-up effect on the cured shapes of bistable composite plates Keywords:

Bistable , Composite Laminate , Morphing , Rayleigh-Ritz method , FEM