Hygro-Thermo-Mechanical Vibration and Buckling Analysis of Composite Laminates with Elliptical Cutouts under Localized Edge Loads

Perforated composite laminates are frequently encountered in multiple engineering applications as sub-components of complicated structures. In many of these applications, the primary objective of using the panel is to resist buckling under diverse environmental and loading conditions. This paper is mainly focused on the vibration and buckling responses of composite laminates with elliptical cutouts subjected to localized edge loads under different hygrothermal environments. Toward this, a nine-noded heterosis plate element has been utilized to discretize the plate by adopting a refined meshing pattern around the elliptical cutout. The geometric nonlinearity has been incorporated to predict free vibrations under the hygrothermal environment. Considering the plethora of applications of composite laminates in hygrothermal conditions, a new temperature/moisture-dependent model is presented by taking into consideration various mechanical loadings. For a given environmental and loading condition, the stress distribution within the perforated panel is highly non-uniform in nature and hence, a novel dynamic approach has been proposed to solve buckling problems by adopting two sets of boundary conditions. A MATLAB program has been developed to investigate the effect of various parameters such as elliptical cutout size, elliptical orientation, elliptical cutout eccentricity, thickness and boundary conditions of the laminated composite plate under diverse hygrothermomechanical loading conditions. A notable difference in the critical buckling load is observed when the locally prestressed perforated panels are subjected to complex hygrothermal environments, especially at larger elliptical cutouts and hence the importance of localized edge loads under hygrothermal environment is emphasized.

Environment in stone chamber of an unexcavated tumulus and preservation of buried relics: Part 1. Environmental monitoring for simulated tumulus

Japan has many unexcavated tumuli, most of which were buried along with artifacts of precious cultural heritage. For such a tumulus, it is essential to understand how changes in its exterior environment affect its interior environment, and how those interior changes affect the deterioration of the relics buried in the stone chamber. In this study, an underground space was constructed in the forest of the Katsura Campus of Kyoto University to simulate the environment of an unexcavated tumulus, and long-term monitoring was implemented in the simulated stone chamber, including the temperature, humidity, water potential, wetness, and oxygen and carbon dioxide concentrations, along with metal corrosion tests. This article is focused on environmental monitoring, and the results demonstrate that the simulated tumulus has the general characteristics of the hygrothermal environments of an unexcavated tumulus that has small temperature fluctuation and near-saturation humidity. The ceiling of the simulated chamber condensed significantly from October to April, which is related to the variations of the ceiling and floor temperatures. Also, the wetness of the walls in the simulated chamber was affected by rainfall. The oxygen concentration in the simulated stone chamber varied in the range of 13%–19% in 2015, and the variation of carbon dioxide concentration in the simulated stone chamber was contrary to the oxygen concentration and varied in the range of 3%–9% in 2016. The oxygen concentration in the stone chamber was similar to that in the surrounding soil that decreased at times of rainfall, contrary to the fluctuations in the soil water content.