Improved Finite Element Thermomechanical Analysis of Laminated Composite and Sandwich Plates Using the New Enhanced First-Order Shear Deformation Theory

This paper proposes a simple yet accurate finite element (FE) formulation for the thermomechanical analysis of laminated composites and sandwich plates. To this end, an enhanced first-order shear deformation theory including the transverse normal effect based on the mixed variational theorem (EFSDTM_TN) was employed in the FE implementation. The primary objective of the FE formulation was to systematically interconnect the displacement and transverse stress fields using the mixed variational theorem (MVT). In the MVT, the transverse stress field is derived from the efficient higher-order plate theory including the transverse normal effect (EHOPT_TN), to enhance the solution accuracy, whereas the displacement field is defined by the first-order shear deformation theory including the transverse normal effect (FSDT_TN), to amplify the numerical efficiency. Furthermore, the transverse displacement field is modified by incorporating the components of the external temperature loading, enabling the consideration of the transverse normal strain effect without introducing additional unknown variables. Based on the predefined relationships, the proposed FE formulation can extract the C0-based computational benefits of FSDT_TN, while improving the solution accuracy for thermomechanical analysis. The numerical performance of the proposed FE formulation was demonstrated by comparing the obtained solutions with those available in the literature, including 3-D exact solutions.