An Analytical Approach to Thermoelastic Bending of Simply Supported Advanced Ribbed Composite Plates

Abstract

In the present paper, an analytical approach is used to study the thermal deflections of a simply supported composite plate with a beam-like stiffener. The results for a plate–beam system exposed to a sinusoidal thermal load is used to study the effects of the low Earth orbit (LEO) thermal conditions on the composite plates, which have been used in the structure of satellites and spacecraft. To solve the governing equations of the system, the Laplace transform method for the time domain is used with the Navier series expansions. As the employed method is completely analytical, the results are exact.