Analysis of Tapered Laminated Composites with Non-Symmetric Lay-Up

ABSTRACf: A global-local approach for the analysis of tapered laminated composites is presented. The method is considerably more economical than existing techniques, A new drop-off element that is degenerated from a 2-D drop-off element is introduced to carry out the global analysis. The drop-off element accommodates the termination of plies within the element and therefore, the size of the stiffness matrix reduces. At the vicinity of the drop-off, where the stress concentration is high, a local analysis with a refined mesh is performed with the results of the global analysis. Since a fine mesh is to be adopted only near the drop-off, there is substantial economy in the computational effort and time as compared to the conventional analysis models. The present method has been validated ex-tensively against published results. The discussions on the stress/strain distributions at dif-ferent locations have been presented. KEY WORDS: drop-off, global-local, interlaminar, delaminate. 1