Laminated beams: deflection and stress as a function of epoxy shear modulus

The large toroidal field coil deflections observed during the PLT power test are due to the poor shear behavior of the insulation material used between layers of copper. Standard techniques for analyzing such laminated structures do not account for this effect. This paper presents an analysis of laminated beams that corrects this deficiency. The analysis explicitly models the mechanical behavior of each layer in a laminated beam and hence avoids the pitfalls involved in any averaging technique. In particular, the shear modulus of the epoxy in a laminated beam (consisting of alternate layers of metal and epoxy) may span the entire range of values from zero to classical. Solution of the governing differential equations defines the stress, strain, and deflection for any point within a laminated beam. The paper summarizes these governing equations and also includes a parametric study of a simple laminated beam