STATIC AND DYNAMIC RESI'ONSE OF ANISOTROI'IC LAMINATED STRUCTURES

Abstract

The present research . work presents the analysis of thin-walled structures made of anisotropic laminated material to determine thelarge deformation response to static, dynamic and seismic loads. The thesis starts with a literature review of past research in the field of large deformation analysis of open and closed thin-walled curved beams. An overview is given of the types, mechanical properties and analysis methods of laminated, anisotropic composite structures used in construction. A thin-walled curved beam finite element taking warping into account has been extended for the analysis of anisotropic laminated thin-walled beams. A nonlinear solution procedure based on minimization of the total potential work has been adopted and extended for the nonlinear static and dynamic analysis of such beams. The performance of the beam element through the adopted nonlinear solution scheme compared favorably with published results of other researchers. An extensive literature review was given for earthquake simulation techniques. A method has been proposed for generation of artificial earthquake records from design smooth response spectra, and its efficiency validated through a numerical analysis. The adopted finite element nonlinear solution method and the proposed earthquake simulation method have been applied to the analysis and design of single and multispan curved bridges, and to cable-stayed bridges made of laminated fibrous composite materials to determine their structural response under general static, dynamic and code specified earthquake loads. Finally, discussion of the obtained results, conclusions and a summary of the thesis are given.