Thermal elastic-plastic stress analysis of steel woven reinforced aluminum metal-matrix composite laminated plates

In this study, an elastic-plastic stress analysis is carried out on symmetric cross-ply [0degrees/90degrees](2) and angle-ply [30degrees/-30degrees](2), [45degrees/-45degrees](2), [60degrees/-60degrees](2) steel woven reinforced aluminum metal-matrix laminated plates under thermal loads varying linearly along the thickness. Laminated composite plates are simply supported and subjected to linear temperature change through the thickness as T0 at the upper and lower surfaces and T-0 at the middle plane, respectively. An analytical solution is performed for satisfying thermal elastic-plastic stress-strain relations and boundary conditions for small plastic deformations. The composite materials are assumed to be linearly hardening. The Tsai-Hill criterion is used as a yield criterion. Plastic and residual stress distributions along the thickness of the plates are obtained. Plastic and residual stress components, (sigma(x))(p), (sigma(y))(p) and (sigma(x))(r), (sigma(y))(r), have some magnitude but (tau(xy))(p) and (tau(xy))(r) are zero for all stacking sequences. All the residual stress components are in static balance with respect to the middle plane of the laminates since they are symmetric in opposite signs. The magnitude of the residual stress components is the highest at the upper and lower surfaces.