Development of an in-house MATLAB code

for finite element analysis of composite

beam under static load
Cite as: AIP Conference Proceedings 2057, 020015 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5085586
Published Online: 11 January 2019

Pratik R. Patil, Aniket S. Ahire, M. L. J. Suman, and S. M. Murigendrappa

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AIP Conference Proceedings 2057, 020015 (2019); https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5085586 2057, 020015

© 2018 Author(s).
 Development of an in-house MATLAB Code for Finite
Element Analysis of Composite Beam under Static Load
Pratik R. Patil1, Aniket S. Ahire1, M. L. J. Suman 1 and S. M. Murigendrappa1, a)
1
Department of Mechanical Engineering, National Institute of Technology Karnataka, Surathkal, India-575025
a)
Corresponding author: [email protected]

Abstract. The focus of this work is to develop an in-house finite element (FE) code using programming software,
MATLAB for analysing composite beam subjected to tensile loading. The composite beams are modelled by using two
dimensional quadrilateral plane elements. The computed results obtained from developed code are validated by
experimentally as per standard ASTM D3039M-14 and commercially available finite element tool, ABAQUS (V2016).
The fabricated composite beams made up of plain woven glass epoxy with eight plies using vacuum bag technique. The
computed results obtained from in-house FE code are in good agreement with the experimental and ABAQUS simulated
results. Further, the developed code has the capability to support post processing in the form of graphical representation.

INTRODUCTION

Many complications and challenges exist while designing and analysing the composite structures, reason being its
anisotropy and inhomogeneous behaviour. The experimental test known as destructive test is very tedious and costly
[1]. Thus, to move towards a destruction free testing methodology, implementation of finite element methods is more
convenient tool in design and analysis of composite structures [2-4]. Experimental and numerical investigations have
been reported [5-6] on failure modes and strength prediction of thin angle plies and focused on their strength
characterization. Their investigation revealed that decrease of areal weight of the ply result in decrease in ply thickness
as well as fiber volume fraction in turn, increases the strength of the plies. An experimental investigation on
mechanical behaviours of thin-ply quasi-isotropic laminates reported by [7] showed significant increase in the ultimate
tensile strength in comparison with traditional ply. Different configurations of the thin ply carbon fiber composites
ranging from low modulus to high modulus reported by [8]. They observed that certain thin-ply composites with a
ply thickness less than 134 µm reach tensile strength corresponding to or approaching the ultimate strain of the fibres
as well as tensile stress at damage as high as 92% of the latter. A numerical model involving two stages to simulate
damage in fiber composites was developed [9].

Past two decades, research work focuses on experimental and numerical investigations of composites. The
numerical based commercially available tools have tedious procedure for specific problems. The present study focuses
on the development of an in-house finite element code in MATLAB to simulate tensile tests on plain woven glass
epoxy composite beams. The computed results from the proposed code have been validated by experimentally and
commercially available finite element tool, ABAQUS.

FINITE ELEMENT FORMULATION

Present study involves development of the finite element code in MATLAB for static analysis of plane woven
glass epoxy composite beams. The global equilibrium equation for composite beam is derived by using finite element
approach. The unknown global force vector are computed by using in-house FE code by applying unit nodal
displacements. For completeness, the following finite element formulation [10, 11] presents the static analysis of plain

Advances in Polymer Composites: Mechanics, Characterization and Applications

AIP Conf. Proc. 2057, 020015-1–020015-7; https://doi.org/10.1063/1.5085586
Published by AIP Publishing. 978-0-7354-1785-4/$30.00

020015-1
woven glass epoxy composite beams subjected to tensile load. The beam is modelled using four node quadrilateral
elements as shown in Figure 1.

The shape functions of the quadrilateral element defined in natural coordinate system are given by

( , ) = 0.25(1 + ) (1a)
( , ) = 0.25(1 + ) (1b)
( , ) = 0.25(1 + ) (1c)
( , ) = 0.25(1 + ) (1d)

where and are the nodal displacements and functions of natural coordinates, and .

FIGURE 1. Four node quadrilateral element

The element displacement field is given by

{ } =[ ] { } (2)

where, N is the shape function matrix, q is the nodal displacement vector and superscript indicates eth element
location.

The element strain vector is given by

{ } = [ ] { } (3)

The element stress vector is given by

{ } = [ ]{ } (4)

The transformed reduced element stiffness matrix is given as,

= (5)

where is the transformation matrix, is the Reuter matrix and is the material stiffness matrix defined by

⎡ 0 ⎤
⎢1 1 ⎥
=⎢ (6)
0 ⎥
⎢1 1 ⎥
⎣ 0 0

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 Where, E is the modulus of elasticity, G is the shear modulus and is the Poisson ratio. The suffixes, 1 and 2
indicates fibre direction.
For bidirectional plain woven composites, we have,

= ; = ; = (7)

The potential energy of an element is given by,

= +
(8)
where, SE is the strain energy of the element of the type,

1
= { } [ ] [ ][ ] { } (9)
2

Here, matrix is a function of Jacobian and the shape function matrices, and work potential on the element is
given by

= { } [ ] { } { } [ ] { } { } { } (10)

where, T, F and P are the traction, body and point force vectors, respectively. V is the element volume and S is the
surface area. The total potential energy of the whole composite beam is given by

= (11)

The desired finite element governing equation of the whole composite beam is obtained by applying the principle
of minimum potential energy to equation (11), we have,

{ } = [ ]{ } (12)

Where, F is the unknown global load vector, q is the known global displacement vector and K is the global stiffness
matrix is given by

[ ]= [ ] [ ][ ] (13)

After imposing boundary conditions and applying unit nodal displacements for unconstrained nodes, the required
solutions for the unknown global load vector can be obtained by solving equation (12).

SCHEME OF IN-HOUSE DEVELOPED FE CODE

The scheme of in-house developed FE code in MATLAB has been utilised to compute the global force vector in
the equation (12). Figure 2 presents the scheme of the FE code. The measured material properties of the composite
beam have been used as an input to the developed programme. The dimensions of the beam are length, 150 mm, width,
25mm and thickness, 3 mm. The geometrical model of the beam as shown in figure 3 generated by in-house code was
meshed using four node quadrilateral element of size, length 5mm and width 5mm, resulting into 150 elements and
186 nodes. The axis along the length of the beam has been considered as x-axis and correspondingly, the axis along
the beam width is y-axis. The nodal connectivity information utilized in the code gives the information about the
connectivity of individual nodes to plot the entire undeformed as well as the deformed shape of beam with the help of
nodal coordinates.

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 The developed code is having main six steps. In the first step, the dimensions of the beam along with the
material properties such as modulus of elasticity, 20GPa, Poisson ratio, 0.26, and the modulus of rigidity, 7.65GPa
are fed into the in-house FE code using subroutine program. Second step, based on the dimensions of the quadrilateral
elements required, the mesh is generated over the domain of the specimen model with the help of nodal coordinates
and the nodal connectivity information. The third step, the material stiffness matrix is generated based on the
formulation in [10, 11]. The forth step, the material stiffness matrix is used to generate the elemental stiffness matrix
based on the formulation explained. The matrices of every individual element combine to develop the global stiffness
matrix. Fifth step, the boundary conditions; zero displacement at the fixed nodes and a desired or unit magnitude of
displacement at the nodes on the edge opposite to the fixed edge are fed into the in-house code. Finally, the sixth step,
evaluates the forces, strains and stresses. Further, code supports in plotting the stress-strain, force- deformation curves.

Step 1: Input geometrical parameters and material

properties.

Step 2: Mesh generation over the beam using the nodal

connectivity.

Step 3: Calculation of the material stiffness matrix,

for every individual plies.

Step 4: Calculation of the element stiffness matrix and

generate the global stiffness matrix.

Step 5: Imposing boundary conditions and applying unit

displacements for unconstrained nodes.

Step 6: Calculation of forces, strains, and stresses.

Step 7: Plot of the required results.

FIGURE 2. Flowchart of the in-house developed FE code in MATLAB.

25mm

3mm

250mm

FIGURE 3. Geometry of the composite beam.

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 EXPERIMENTATION
The composite laminate consisting of eight layers of plain woven S-Glass fabric of areal density 400 gsm as
reinforcement and as the matrix with epoxy resin LY556 and HY951 as hardener was fabricated using the vacuum
bagging technique. In the vacuum bag molding technique, a flexible film was used to enclose the part and protect it
from atmosphere. Vacuum generated by drawing out air from the vacuum bag and thus, the part is compressed under
the action of external atmospheric pressure during the cure. Laminate was cut to extract the beam specimens as shown
in figure 3 for tensile tests. The specimen dimensions considered in the tests are effective length 250mm, width 25mm
and average thickness of 3mm. End tabs were attached at an equal distance of 50mm from each end. The universal
testing machine (Make Tinius Olsen, 40kN capacity) was used to perform tests for the evaluation of tensile
characteristics of plain woven glass epoxy composite beam. Tests were performed as per the ASTM standard
D3039M-14. The specimen was subjected to a constant rate of 2 mm/min till failure. The strain and the corresponding
stress were recorded. The measured results were used to validate the computed results from the in-house developed
FE code.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSION

The finite element code developed using MATLAB facilitate to compute the stress-strain curves for the applied
displacements. Computed results for stress-strain plots are presented in figures 4. The plots have been obtained by
computing all the unknown parameters for an incremental displacement of 0.05 mm during every iteration using
equation (12). In order to verify the FE code, the computed results have been compared with the results obtained by
experimentally as well as with the commercially available finite element tool, ABAQUS (V2016). A finite element
model of the composite beam was created in ABAQUS CAE. The laminar properties and composite layup properties
were incorporated. The measured material properties and geometrical parameters of the beam were used to compute
the stresses, strains and forces. The model was meshed with quad dominant conventional shell element.

FIGURE 4. Plot of normalised stress vs. strain of composite beam

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 Figure 5 depicts the deformed condition of the composite beam in comparison with undeformed obtained from in-
house developed code. The code also features explicitly, generation of the graphical representation of finite element
mesh and post process results. The solid line in black colour represents the undeformed condition of the composite
beam whereas, dashed line with red colour represents deformed condition. Similarly, figure 6 show the simulated
deformation contour of the beam obtained in ABAQUS. The blue region on the left-end and the red region on the
right-end represent the clamped region. However, the left-end being completely constrained and the axial tensile
displacement of unit magnitude applied on the right-end. The deformation in the model observed from the in-house
developed FE code exactly replicates that of the deformation contours obtained from the ABAQUS simulation.

Undeformed Contour
Deformed Contour

FIGURE 5. Deformed and undeformed contour of composite beam in in-house developed FE code

FIGURE 6. Deformation plot of beam simulated in ABAQUS.

The strain, stress and force results obtained from the in-house developed FE code, the tensile test experiments and
ABAQUS simulation have been compared to check the relevance and accuracy of the code. Since, the composite beam
has been strained within the elastic limits, the graphs obtained are straight lines and in accordance with the Hooke’s

020015-6
law. Figure 4 depicts the stress vs. strain plots. The values of stress have been normalized by dividing all the values
of stresses obtained with the magnitude of maximum stress observed during the experimentation. It is observed that
the results obtained from the developed FE code is in good agreement with those obtained from the ABAQUS
simulation. However, both simulated results show a minor deviation from the experimental results. The deviation in
the results as compared to experiments is because viscoelastic behaviour of the resin assumed to be linear. The
developed code found to be having potential capability to support post processing in the form of graphical
representation.

CONCLUSION
The present work focuses on development of an in-house finite element (FE) code using programming software,
MATLAB for analysing composite beam subjected to tensile loading. The composite beams were modelled by using
two dimensional quadrilateral plane elements. The results obtained from developed code was validated with
experimentally as per standard ASTM D3039M-14 and commercially available finite element tool, ABAQUS
(V2016). The fabricated composite beams were made from plain woven glass epoxy with eight plies using vacuum
bag technique. The computed results obtained from in-house developed FE code compared with the experimental and
ABAQUS results in good agreement. The developed code has the capability to support post processing in the form of
graphical representation.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study was carried out in Fracture Mechanics and Fatigue Lab, Department of Mechanical Engineering, NITK,
created under financial support of SERB, DST Project No: EMR/2016/002497. The authors acknowledges for
extending the lab facility.

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