DYNAMIC FINITE-ELEMENT ANALYSIS OF VISCOELASTIC COMPOSITE PLATES IN THE TIME-DOMAIN

Numerical procedures for analysing transient responses of anisotropic viscoelastic composite plates have been developed in the time domain using variational principles and a direct time integration method. Recursion relationships have been formulated in order to reduce computer storage substantially. The method developed herein requires only two previous time solutions to evaluate the next time solution and the necessary storage is independent of the number of the time steps. Verification studies were conducted to evaluate the accuracy and convergence of the present numerical algorithm and they show that the numerical solutions agree well with analytical ones. As examples, dynamic transient responses of viscoelastic composite plates subjected to unit step loads were calculated using the presently developed procedure.