Thermoelastic and vibration response analysis of shape memory alloy reinforced active bimorph composites

In this paper, thermoelastic and free vibration responses of hybrid Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) and E-glass fiber-reinforced composites are investigated using finite element analysis. We consider four composites for analysis and comparison of performances, (1) single layer SMA fiber-reinforced hybrid composite (unimorph SMAHC), (2) a two-layer (cross-ply) SMA fiber-reinforced hybrid composite (bimorph SMAHC), (3) single layer SMA fiber-reinforced with a honeycomb core, and (4) single layer SMA fiber-reinforced with reentrant-honeycomb or auxetic core. We analyze the bending response of all the aforementioned composite structures, focusing on the bimorph anticlastic and synclastic bending with negative and positive Gaussian curvatures, respectively. The uniqueness of this work is utilizing the shape memory effect of the SMA fibers to achieve active shape control of low-stiffness and lightweight auxetic composite structures. We investigated the free vibration response and analyzed the effect of the fiber volume fraction and the fiber orientation angle on the natural frequency of the system. Further, the role of the reentrant angle and stiffness of honeycomb struts on the overall effective mechanical properties of the ply is also studied. Results confirm the non-linearity of the parametric combination and the importance of optimization of these parameters for improved Gaussian curvature. The findings are envisaged to be useful for the design of lightweight rigidizable space structures and tensairity structures. (paper)