Static and free vibration analysis of laminated beams by refined theory based on Chebyshev Polynomials

This paper presents a new class of refined beam theories for the static and dynamic analyseis of composite structures. These beam models are obtained by implementing higher-order expansions of Chebyshev polynomials for the three components of the displacement field over the beam cross-section. The Carrera Unified Formulation (CUF) is adopted to obtain higher-order beam models. The governing equations are written in terms of fundamental nuclei, which are independent of the choice of the expansion order and the interpolating polynomials. Static and free vibration analysis of laminated beams and thin walled boxes has been carried out. Results obtained with the novel Chebyshev Expansion (CE) model have been compared with those available in the literature. For comparison, Taylor-like Expansion (TE) and Lagrange Expansion (LE) CUF models, commercial codes, analytical and experimental data are exploited. The performances of refined beam models in terms of computational cost and accuracy in comparison to the reference solutions have been assessed. The analysis performed has pointed out the high level of accuracy reached by the refined beam models with lower computational costs than 2D and 3D Finite Elements.