A refined finite element method for stress analysis of rotors and rotating disks with variable thickness

In this paper, a refined finite element method (FEM) based on the Carrera unified formulation (CUF) is extended for stress analysis of rotors and rotating disks with variable thickness. The variational form of the 3D equilibrium equations is obtained using the principle of minimum potential energy and solved by this method. Employing the 1D CUF, a rotor is assumed to be a beam along its axis. In this case, the geometry of the rotor can be discretized into a finite number of 1D beam elements along its axis, while the Lagrange polynomial expansions may be employed to approximate the displacement field over the cross section of the beam. Therefore, the FEM matrices and vectors can be written in terms of fundamental nuclei, whose forms are independent of the order of the beam theories. The validity and capabilities of the presented procedure are investigated in a number of numerical examples, and some conclusions are reported and compared well with the analytical and 3D finite element solutions. The results obtained by the 1D CUF models are in close agreement with the reference solutions. Moreover, it is verified that the innovative procedure presented in this paper can be used as an accurate tool of structural analysis for complex rotors to reduce the computational costs.