Thermal elastic-plastic stress analysis of an anisotropic structure

In this paper, a polynomial stress function is utilized to satisfy both the governing differential equation for an anisotropic plane stress problem and the corresponding boundary conditions for plastic deformation. A theoretical solution for the thermal elastic–plastic problem of composite structure is obtained by means of the Tsai–Hill strength theory of anisotropic material. The composite structure is composed of a steel fibre-reinforced aluminium metal–matrix with a linear hardening material property. On the other hand, an elastic–plastic finite element analysis for the same problem is also carried out by using ABAQUS. The theoretical solution is in good agreement with the results from the finite element analysis. Finally, some examples are given and the corresponding results are discussed.