Coupled Thermoelasticity Impact Response Analysis of Composite Plates with SMA Wires in Thermal Environments

Abstract

Impact responses of rectangular composite plates with embedded shape memory alloy (SMA) wires are investigated in the present research. The plate is assumed to be placed in a thermal environment; so that in contrast to the available researches in the field, the shape memory and ferroelasticity effects have to be considered also in addition to the superelasticity. The governing equations are derived based on a proposed enhanced free energy function and refined constitutive equations with coupled thermoelasticity expressions and solved by the finite element method. The resulting governing equations are solved through an iterative solution scheme, a bridging law, and a special phase transformation tracing algorithm. A special case of the results is verified by the experimental results extracted by the authors. Results showed that the volume change rate, impact-induced temperature rise, and ambient temperature may significantly affect the phase transformations mechanism and the non-linear indentation phenomenon.