Iterative global-local procedure for the analysis of thin-walled composite laminates

This paper presents a finite element procedure based on Bridging multi-scale method (BMM) in order to incorporate the effect of local/cross-sectional deformations (e.g., flange local buckling and web crippling) on the global behaviour of thin-walled members made of fibre-reinforced polymer composite laminates. This method allows the application of local shell elements in critical regions of an existing beam-type model. Therefore, it obviates the need for using computationally expensive shell elements in the whole domain of the structure, which is otherwise necessary to capture the effect of the localized behaviour. Consequently, highly accurate analysis results can be achieved with this method by using significantly smaller finite element model, compared to the existing methods. The proposed method can be used for composite polymer laminates with arbitrary fibre orientation directions in different layers of the material, and under various loading conditions. Comparison with full shell-type finite element analysis results are made in order to illustrate the efficiency and accuracy of the proposed technique.