Structural analysis of corrugated composite shell for use in morphing structures

Today, the use of morphing technology and corrugated composite shells as a new structure in aerospace systems has attracted the attention of researchers who want to enhance the performance of aerospace systems. In this research, using strain energy and Castigliano's theorems, the deformation of corrugated composite shells with sinusoidal, trapezoidal, square, and triangular geometries is calculated and the effect of geometric and mechanical parameters in each waveform is investigated. Among the waveforms, the sinusoidal waveform has the highest deformation and also the lowest tensile stiffness compared to other waveforms. Therefore, this waveform is further studied. First, a sinusoidal corrugated shell made of 7050 aluminum alloy is considered and compared with a glass/epoxy composite. The results show that in 7050 aluminum alloy, the change in length is 50% less than glass/epoxy composite and 62% higher in hardness. Also, the composite sinusoidal corrugated shell is investigated in terms of calculating the principal stress in all layers, to detect maximum stress points during failure. The theoretical values calculated in MATLAB software have also been compared with the results of finite element analysis in ABAQUS software. The results of this comparison indicate that the maximum stresses are in the body (66 × 10 6 Pa) and bottom (16 × 10 6 Pa) of the corrugated shell, and the minimum stress (340 × 10 3 Pa) is at the top of the shell.