Meccanica

The absence of universally accepted solutions for the design of reinforcement in plates and shells in the structural concrete codes, and the constant development of computers combined with powerful numerical methods, reveal the need for a standard procedure to calculate the required reinforcement in thin elements subject to membrane and flexural forces. In the present study, the amount of reinforcement is optimized locally for each finite element of the mesh that models the geometry of the problem. Some numerical examples are given and compared to the results provided by other authors, achieving significant savings in reinforcement.

A size-dependent Reddy–Levinson beam model is developed based on a strain gradient elasticity theory. Governing equations and boundary conditions are derived by using Hamilton’s principle. The model contains three material length scale parameters, which may effectively capture the size effect in micron or sub-micron. This model can degenerate into the modified couple stress model or even the classical model if two or all material length scale parameters are taken to be zero respectively. In addition, the present model recovers the micro scale Timoshenko and Bernoulli–Euler beam models based on the same strain gradient elasticity theory. To illustrate the new model, the static bending and free vibration problems of a simply supported micro scale Reddy–Levinson beam are solved respectively; the results are compared with the reduced models. Numerical results reveal that the differences in the deflection, rotation and natural frequency predicted by the present model and the other two reduced Reddy–Levinson models are getting larger as the beam thickness is comparable to the material length scale parameters. These differences, however, are decreasing or even diminishing with the increase of the beam thickness. This study may be helpful to characterize the mechanical properties of small scale beam-like structures for a wide range of potential applications.

Thermal instability of shallow spherical shells made of functionally graded material (FGM) and surface-bonded piezoelectric actuators is studied in this paper. The governing equations are based on the first order theory of shells and the Sanders nonlinear kinematics equations. It is assumed that the property of the functionally graded materials vary continuously through the thickness of the shell according to a power law distribution of the volume fraction of the constituent materials. The constituent material of the functionally graded shell is assumed to be a mixture of ceramic and metal. The analytical solutions are obtained for three types of thermal loadings and constant applied actuator voltage. Results for simpler states are validated with the known data in literature.

This paper deals with some unsteady unidirectional transient flows of generalized Burgers’ fluid in an annular pipe. Exact solutions of some unsteady flows of generalized Burgers’ fluid in an annular pipe are obtained by using Hankel transform and Laplace transform. The following two problems have been studied: (1) Poiseuille flow due to a constant pressure gradient; (2) axial Couette flow in a annulus. The well known solutions for Navier-Stokes fluid, as well as those corresponding to a Maxwell fluid, a second grade fluid and an Oldroyd-B fluid appear as limiting cases of our solutions.