Free vibration of buckled SMA reinforced composite laminates

The effect of shape memory alloys (SMA) on the free vibration behavior of buckled cross-ply and angle-ply laminates by varying the SMA fiber spacing was investigated using the finite element method. The formulation of the location-dependent linear, nonlinear stiffness and mass matrices due to non-homogeneous material properties and the temperature-dependent recovery stress stiffness matrix were derived. Numerical results show that the increase of SMA fiber volume fraction and prestrain may generate more recovery stress, and increase the stiffness of SMA reinforced composite laminates. Therefore, the postbuckling deflections of the plate will be decreased considerably and the natural frequencies of the plate may be modified significantly. The buckling mode and fundamental natural mode are dependent on the graphite fiber orientation of the SMA reinforced angle-ply laminates. The relationship between the buckling mode and fundamental natural mode is clearly displayed and studied in detail.