Studies on large deflection of geometrically nonlinear corrugated structures

This manuscript proposes an iterative scheme for geometrically large deflection analysis of corrugated structures using the nonlinear shooting method. The corrugated structure is modeled by discretizing it in several corrugated units. The solution of each unit is obtained assuming it to be consistering of several beam elements. Finally, the deflection of a corrugated structure is calculated assembling the deflection of each of the corrugated units. The formulation has been extended to various boundary conditions (fixed–fixed and fixed–hinged) and loading conditions (point loads and uniformly distributed load). This shows the versatility of the methods in solving various problems. Furthermore, two prototypes of the corrugated structure are fabricated using aluminum and carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) laminate, and a moment actuation test is performed. The deflections of these prototypes obtained using the proposed iterative scheme are compared with the numerical model and validated with experiments, and results are found to be in good agreement.