Stochastic strain and stress computation of a higher-order sandwich beam using hybrid stochastic time domain spectral element method

In this work, a combination of the spectral stochastic finite element method (SSFEM) and the time-domain spectral element method (TSEM), referred to as the stochastic time domain spectral element method (STSEM), is presented to compute the stochasticity of strain and stress of a higher-order sandwich composite beam with spatial variability in the material properties. The method proposed in this work employs the efficiencies of both SSFEM and TSEM for the uncertainty analysis of a sandwich beam. The material properties of face sheets and core are considered as Gaussian random fields, which are discretized using the Karhunen-Loeve expansion, and polynomial chaos expansion is used to represent the response quantity. A numerical example is considered for which, first, a sensitivity analysis is performed to identify the most sensitive material properties. Then, the proposed STSEM is used to demonstrate the computational efficiency and numerical accuracy in comparison with Monte-Carlo simulation. Moreover, the effect of core depth on strain and stress variability is also examined.

Automated summary

In this work, a combination method called STSEM is proposed for computing the stochasticity of a higher-order sandwich composite beam with spatial variability in the material properties. The efficiency of both SSFEM and TSEM is utilized for uncertainty analysis of the sandwich beam, and sensitivity analysis of the material properties is performed.