The effect of curing deformation on the vibration behavior of laminated composite beams

Abstract In this paper, the effect of curing deformation on the vibration behavior of a laminated composite beam is studied. The analysis model of the vibration of the laminated composite beam with arbitrary boundary conditions considering the curing deformation is established based on the first-order shear deformation theory. Curing deformation is considered as one kind of geometric imperfections and introduced into the analysis model. The geometric imperfection model in the form of parabolic functions is developed to describe the curing deformation in which curing temperature, ply stacking sequence, and tool-part interaction are taken into account. The Rayleigh-Ritz method is used to obtain the natural frequencies of the laminated composite beam considering curing deformation. The results reveal that the initial curing deformation has a great influence on the vibration behavior of laminated composite beam. Due to the existence of curing deformation, the first order natural frequencies of laminated composite beam with clamped–clamped (C–C) boundary condition have increased. The influences of the ply stacking sequence, the curing temperature, boundary conditions and the tool-part interaction on the free vibration behavior of the laminated beam are discussed.