Hygro-elastic coupling in a 3D exact shell model for bending analysis of layered composite structures

In this work, a 3D fully coupled hygro-elastic model is proposed. The moisture content profile is a primary variable of the model’s displacements. This generic fully coupled 3D exact shell model allows the investigations into the consequences arising from moisture content and elastic fields in terms of stresses and deformations on different plate and shell configurations embedded in composite and laminated layers. Cylinders, plates, cylindrical and spherical shells are analyzed in the orthogonal mixed curvilinear reference system. The 3D equilibrium equations and the 3D Fick diffusion equation for spherical shells are fully coupled in a dedicated system. The main advantage of the orthogonal mixed curvilinear coordinates is related to the degeneration of the equations for spherical shells to simpler geometries thanks to basic considerations of the radii of curvature. The exponential matrix method is used to solve this fully coupled model based on partial differential equations in the thickness direction. The closed-form solution is related to simply supported sides and harmonic forms for displacements and the moisture content. The moisture content amplitudes are directly applied at the top and bottom outer faces through steady-state hypotheses. The final system is based on a set of coupled homogeneous second-order differential equations. A first-order differential equation system is obtained by redoubling the number of variables. The moisture field implications are evaluated for the static analysis of the plates and shells in terms of displacement and stress components. After preliminary validations, new benchmarks are proposed for several thickness ratios, geometrical and material data, lamination sequences and moisture values imposed at the external surfaces. In the proposed results, there is clearly accordance between the uncoupled hygro-elastic model (where the 3D Fick diffusion law is separately solved) and this new fully coupled hygro-elastic model: the differences between the investigated variables (displacements, moisture contents, stresses and strains) are always less than 0.3%. The main advantages of the 3D coupled hygro-elastic model are a more compact mathematical formulation and lower computational costs. Both effects connected with the thickness layer and the embedded materials are included in the conducted hygro-elastic analyses.