Dynamics of thick hygrothermal viscoelastic composite laminates through finite element method

An uncoupled computational model for analyzing the hygrothermal dynamic response of composite laminates has been developed. The constitutive equations, expressed in an integral form, and involving relaxation moduli are adopted, to describe the non-aging hygrothermorheologically simple materials. A Prony series represents the relaxation moduli is exploited in order to derive a recursive relationship, and thereby eliminate the storage problem that arises when dealing with material possessing memory. The problem is formulated in a descritized variational form. Mindlin and higher order finite elements are employed for spatial descretization, while the Newmark average acceleration scheme is exploited for temporal descritization. The adopted recursive formula uses only the details of the previous event to compute the details of the current one. Numerical results of the displacement fields of both thin and thick viscoelastic laminates problems are discussed to show up the effectiveness of Mindlin and higher-order shear theories.