An elastic-plastic stress analysis in silicon carbide fiber-reinforced magnesium metal-matrix composite beam having rectangular cross section under transverse loading

In this work, an elastic-plastic stress analysis has been conducted for silicon carbide fiber-reinforced magnesium metal-matrix composite beam. The composite beam has a rectangular cross section. The beam is cantilevered and is loaded by a single force at its free end. In solution, the composite beam is assumed perfectly plastic to simplify the investigation. An analytical solution is presented for the elastic-plastic regions. In order to verify the analytical solution results were compared with the finite element method. A rectangular element with nine nodes has been chosen. A composite plate is meshed into 48 elements and 228 nodes with simply supported and in-plane loading conditions. Predictions of the stress distributions of the beam using finite elements were overall in good agreement with the analytical values. Stress distributions of the composite beam are calculated with respect to its fiber orientation. Orientation angles of the fiber are chosen as 0, 30, 45, 60, and 90 degrees. The plastic zone expands more at the upper side of the composite beam than at the lower side for 30, 45, and 60 degrees orientation angles. Residual stress components of sigma(x) and tau(xy) are also found in the section of the composite beam.