European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

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European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ejmsol

Bending and buckling of general laminated curved beams using

NURBS-based isogeometric analysis
Anh-Tuan Luu, Nam-Il Kim, Jaehong Lee*
Department of Architectural Engineering, Sejong University, 209 Neungdong-ro, Gwangjin-gu, Seoul 143-747, Republic of Korea

a r t i c l e i n f o

a b s t r a c t

Article history:
Received 2 October 2014
Accepted 21 July 2015
Available online 29 July 2015

In this paper, the bending and buckling analyses of shear deformable laminated composite curved beams
with arbitrary lay-up and curvature are presented based on the NURBS-based isogeometric approach.
The equivalent modulus of elasticity is utilized to account for all the material couplings in laminated
composite curved beams and the deepness term is exactly integrated into laminate stiffness parameters.
The displacement eld, geometry and curvature are all together modelled by NURBS. Results of the nondimensional maximum deection and the non-dimensional critical buckling load are compared with
other available results in order to demonstrate the validity of the proposed isogeometric analysis
framework. The buckling response of laminated circular beams under uniform compression and parabolic curved beams subjected to a vertical load uniformly distributed along the span is investigated. The
buckling mode transition phenomenon is exhibited for both types of curved beams.
2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

Keywords:
Isogeometric analysis
Laminated composite
Curved beams

1. Introduction
The laminated composite materials are causing the increased
usage in a wide variety of structural applications in the aerospace,
civil construction, marine and offshore industries during the past
four decades. The curved beam made of laminated composite materials are generally used as structural components of light-weight
heavy load bearing elements because of the high strength-toweight and stiffness-to-weight ratios, the ability of being
different strengths in different directions and the nature of being
tailored to satisfy the design requirements of strength and stiffness
in practical designs. For this reason, an accurate prediction for the
structural behaviours of laminated composite curved beams is of
fundamental importance in the design of these structures.
Up to the present, considerable research efforts have been made
for the improved analysis of curved beams made of composite
materials. An extensive survey for theoretical developments and
their applications on vibration of straight and curved composite
beams can be found in the review article by Hajianmaleki and Qatu
(2013). The classical laminated curved beam theory was applied by
Qatu (1992) and Qatu and Elsharkawy (1993) to the vibration
problems of thin arches by using the Ritz method for the simply

* Corresponding author. Tel.: 82 2 3408 3287; fax: 82 2 3408 3331.

E-mail address: jhlee@sejong.ac.kr (J. Lee).
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.euromechsol.2015.07.006
0997-7538/ 2015 Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.

supported and arbitrary boundaries, respectively. For a moderately

deep laminated composite arch with highly anisotropic materials,
the natural frequencies may be overestimated since the effects of
shear deformation and rotary inertia are neglected. To take into
account these effects, Qatu (1993) developed the rst order shear
deformation theory for moderately deep arches including the
deepness term in the fundamental equations. Ahmed (1971, 1972)
studied the effect of transverse shear deformation for honeycomb
sandwich curved beams using the nite element analysis.
Raveendranath et al. (2000) derived coupled polynomial displacement elds using the element equilibrium equations incorporate
geometrical and material couplings in a consistent manner and
proposed an efcient two-node Timoshenko-type laminated
curved beam element for the static and vibration analyses.
Malekzadeh (2007) presented the two-dimensional theory of
elasticity for the free vibration analysis of thick laminated deep
circular arches. The layerwise nite element method was used to
obtain the through-the-thickness discretized forms of the equations of motion and exact solution was obtained for the simply
supported antisymmetric cross-ply laminated arches. Malekzadeh
et al. (2008) introduced an efcient a hybrid layerwise and differential quadrature method based on the two-dimensional elasticity
theory. To approximate the displacement components in the
normal (radial) direction, the layerwise theory was used and the
resulting equations of motion were discretized using the differential quadrature method. They demonstrated the fast rates of

A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

convergence of the method and its high accuracy with low

computational efforts. The equations of motion were derived by
Khdeir and Reddy (1997) from the Hamilton's principle for the free
and forced vibration of the cross-ply laminated thin, moderately
thick, and thick shallow arches. The exact natural frequencies were
determined for various end conditions using the state space
concept. The closed-form solutions to static problems of laminated
composite curved beams with variable curvature were derived by
Lin and Hsieh (2007). Recently, Hajianmaleki and Qatu (2012)
developed a modied rst order shear deformation theory accounting for deepness, laminate coupling, shear deformation, and
rotary inertia for static and free vibration analyses of composite
curved beams. They presented the exact solution for simply supported boundary condition as well as numerical solutions using the
general differential quadrature method for other boundary
conditions.
It is well known that the buckling behaviour of curved beam is
very complex since deformations of beam depend on the coupled
equations between tangential, normal displacements and rotation
by curvature effects. Up to the present, a large amount of work was
devoted to the buckling analysis of curved beams. Many researchers including Timoshenko and Gere (1961), Papangelis and
Trahair (1987), Trahair and Papangelis (1987), Yang and Kuo
(1986, 1987), Yang et al. (1991), Kang and Yoo (1994a, 1994b), and
Kim et al. (2005) attempted to study the in-plane and out-of-plane
buckling of curved beams by presenting analytical solutions. Kang
et al. (1996) utilized the differential quadrature method (DQM) to
analyse in-plane buckling of curved beams under uniform

compression. Yoo et al. (1996), Kim et al. (2005b) and Oztrk

et al.
(2006) investigated the buckling characteristics of curved beams by
using the nite element method (FEM). It should be noted that in
these studies on the buckling analysis, the radius of curvature is
constant, thus the problems can be simplied by ignoring the
variable curvature effect in integrations. It can be realized not much
work has been devoted to the buckling of curved beams with variable curvature. Dinnik (1946) provided one of the earliest numerical solutions to the buckling of parabolic curved beam under a
uniformly distributed vertical load. The same problems were solved
by Tadjbakhsh (1981) and Attard et al. (2014). While Tadjbakhsh
(1981) used the EulereBernoulli assumptions in his research,
Attard et al. (2014) improved their formulation by taking into account the shear deformation effect. Nieh et al. (2003) combined
series solutions with stiffness matrices to construct an analytical
solution to buckling of elliptic curved beams subjected to a uniformly distributed vertical load. The above mentioned studies are
limited to the buckling analysis of curved beams made of isotropic
materials. For laminated composite materials, Matsunaga (2004)
developed the relation between natural frequencies and buckling
stresses of the simply supported laminated composite curved beam
subjected to initial axial stress by using the method of power series
expansion for the displacement eld. Fraternali et al. (2013) utilized
FEM to predict the buckling and the post-buckling behaviour of
symmetric cross-ply laminated composite curved beams.
Recently, a family of the so-called isogeometric analysis which
was introduced by Hughes et al. (2005) has been seen as a powerful
computational method. The isogeometric analysis (IGA) has the
ability of integrating the nite element analysis (FEA) and the
Computer Aided Design (CAD). The fundamental concept behind
IGA is to utilize the basis functions that are able to model exactly
the geometry from the CAD point of view for numerical simulations
of physical phenomena. It can be basically achieved by using the Bsplines or non-uniform rational B-splines (NURBS) for the
geometrical representation and invoking the isoparametric concept
to dene the unknown eld variables. A distinct advantage over
FEM is that the mesh renement is not only simply accomplished

219

by the automatic communication with the CAD geometry tools, but

leaves the geometry intact. Another intriguing trait of these functions is that they are typically smooth beyond the classical C0continuity of the standard FEM. Comprehensive knowledge of IGA
could be found in the text book of Cottrell et al. (2009). IGA-based
approaches have been used to solve many problems in a wide range
of research areas including beams (Adam et al., 2014; Auricchio
et al., 2013; Bouclier et al., 2012; Cazzani et al., 2014; Kiendl et al.,
2015; Luu et al., 2015), plates (Kapoor and Kapania, 2012; Shojaee
et al., 2012; Thai et al., 2012) and shells (Bazilevs et al., 2011;
Benson et al., 2010, 2011; Kiendl et al., 2009).
The objective of this paper is to present NURBS-based isogeometric bending and buckling analyses for laminated composite
curved beams with arbitrary lay-up and curvature. The
Timoshenko-type deep curved beam theory using the equivalent
modulus of elasticity which accounts for the material couplings in
laminates with arbitrary lay-up and modied ABD parameters
which include the exact integration of the deepness term, is
implemented to derive the governing equations. The free-form
curved beams are modelled exactly by NURBS that is the NURBS
basis functions are used instead of traditional Lagrange interpolation functions in approximating the displacement eld, the curvilinear domain and curvature are calculated by NURBS geometry. In
addition, the h-, p- and k-renement strategies are implemented to
create NURBS elements with high orders and high continuities
which generally alleviate the membrane and shear locking. The
verication of the proposed model is obtained by comparing the
current results with previously published works and good agreements are observed. The characteristics of the present IGA are
exhibited through the convergence study. The bending analysis of
circular and elliptic curved beams is performed. The buckling
behaviour of laminated composite circular curved beams under
uniform compression and parabolic curved beams subjected to
uniformly distributed vertical load along the span is investigated
for the rst time. The buckling mode transition phenomenon is
shown for both types of laminated curved beams.

2. NURBS fundamentals
This section briey represents main features of NURBS. The
details for NURBS-based geometric modelling could be found in
Piegl and Tiller (1997) and Cottrell et al. (2009).
NURBS are derived from B-splines which are piecewise polynomial curves composed of linear combinations of B-spline basis
functions. The primary component of B-spline basis functions is a
knot vector X x1 ; x2 ; ; xnp1  which is a set of non-decreasing
real numbers in the interval [x1,xnp1]. Here, xi 2R is the ith knot, i
is the knot index, i 1,2,,n p 1, p is the polynomial order and
n is the number of basis functions. If all knots are equally spaced,
the knot vector is called uniform. Otherwise, it is a non-uniform
knot vector. If the rst and last knots are repeated (p 1) times,
it is said to be open. The multiplicity of a knot value is the number of
times it appears in the knot vector. The intervals [x1,xnp1] and
[xi,xi1) are called a patch and a knot span, respectively. Based on
the knot vector X, B-spline basis functions Bi,p(x) are dened
recursively starting with piecewise constants (p 0) as follows:

Bi;0 x

1
0

if xi  x < xi1 ;
otherwise:

(1)

For p 1,2,3,, they are dened by

Bi;p x

xip1  x
x  xi
B
x
B
x:
xip  xi i;p1
xip1  xi1 i1;p1

(2)

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A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

B-spline basis functions are Cpk-continuous at a knot of multiplicity k. Basis functions are interpolatory at the ends of the interval and at the knot whose multiplicity is p (C0-continuity). When
p 1, the B-spline basis functions are identical to the standard
Lagrange linear nite element basis functions.
A piecewise polynomial B-spline curve C(x) is dened by a linear
combination of B-spline basis functions and coefcients over the
parametric space (the coefcients are points in d-dimensional
physical space Rd , referred to as control points Pi):

Cx

n
X

Bi;p xPi :

(3)

i1

An example of a B-spline curve constructed by eight B-spline

basis functions of the open, non-uniform knot vector
X f0; 0; 0; 1; 2; 3; 3; 4; 5; 5; 5g is given in Fig. 1.
A rational B-spline curve is dened as follows:

Pn

Cx Pi1
n
i1

Bi;p xwi
Bi;p xwi

Pi

n
X

Ni;p xPi ;

(4)

i1

where wi are weights, Ni,p are rational B-spline basis functions. If

the knot vector is non-uniform, the basis becomes Non-Uniform
Rational B-Spline (NURBS) basis functions.
3. Laminated deep curved beam theory
3.1. Kinematics
In this study, a laminated composite curved beam with rectangular cross-section of width b and thickness h is considered by its
middle surface. The beam is composed of layers of orthotropic
material oriented at arbitrary angle q with respect to the longitudinal axis. Fig. 2 shows the geometry of the laminated curved beam
in a right-handed curvilinear coordinate system (x,z), in which x is
the curvilinear coordinate coincides with the centroidal axis and z
is the coordinate perpendicular to the centre line in-plane of curved
beam; R is the radius of curvature; u and w are the tangential and
normal displacements, respectively, of the beam middle surface
material point; j is the bending rotation of the beam cross section
about the out-of-plane axis.
In the displacement-based formulation, the assumed displacement eld is presented as:

ux; z ux zjx;

(5a)

wx; z wx;

(5b)

where u and w are the generalized displacements along the x and z

directions, respectively. The middle surface strains and curvature
change are given by

0 u0 kw;

(6)

g w0 j  ku;

(7)

c j0 ;

(8)

where 0 and g are the membrane and transverse shear strains,

respectively, at the middle surface; c is the middle surface curvature strain. The superscript prime refers to differentiation with
respect to x. The normal strain at an arbitrary point can be found
from

Fig. 1. B-spline curve and its corresponding quadratic basis functions with open, nonuniform knot vector X f0; 0; 0; 1; 2; 3; 3; 4; 5; 5; 5g.

Fig. 2. Geometry of a laminated composite curved beam.

A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

1
zc:
1 z=R 0

(9)

3.2. Generalized constitutive relations

The axial force, the bending moment and the shear force are
dened as the integrals of the stresses over the cross-sectional area
as follows:

Zh=2
Nb

sdz;

(10a)

h=2

Zh=2
szdz;

Mb

(10b)

h=2

Zh=2
Q b

(10c)

tdz;
h=2

t Q 55 f zg;

"

 #
5
z 2
1
f z
:
4
h=2

k1 z

8 9 2
A11
<N=
M 4 B11
: ;
0
Q

Mb

k1 z

38 9
0 < 0 =
0 5 c ;
: ;
A55
g

(15)

n0
X


R zk
;
R zk1

bEx ln


bEx

(11a)

(16a)


zk  zk1  Rln

k1

R zk
R zk1


;

(16b)

 n
o
1
R zk 2  R zk1 2  2Rzk  zk1
2
k1


R zk
;
 R2 ln
R zk1

D11 R
szdz;

n0
X
k1

k1

z
n0 Z k
X

B11
D11
0

where the A11, B11, D11 and A55 are the stiffness coefcients arising
from the piecewise integration:

B11 R
sdz;

(14)

Substituting Eqs. (13a)e(13b) into Eqs. (11a)e(11c), utilizing Eq.

(9) and carrying out the integration over the thickness piecewise,
from layer to layer, yields:

where s and t are the normal and shear stresses, respectively. The
above equations may be rewritten as:

Nb

(13b)

where Q 55 is the shear modulus and f(z) is the shear correction

function. Assuming parabolic distribution through the thickness,
the shear correction function is given by Vinson and Sierakowski
(1986).

A11 R

z
n0 Z k
X

221

(11b)

k1

n0
X

bEx

(16c)
Q b

z
n0 Z k
X
k1 z

(11c)

tdz;

k1

Ex



cos4 qk
1
2n
sin4 qk

 12 cos2 qk sin2 qk
;
E1
G12
E2
E1

The strain energy stored in a beam during elastic deformation is

1
2

ZL

N0 Mc Qg dx:

(17)

Writing the strain energy functional for the kth lamina and
summing for the whole laminate yields

ZL h

i
A11 20 2B11 0 c D11 c2 A55 g2 dx:

(18)

(12)
where
is the equivalent modulus; E1 and E2 are the elastic
moduli along directions parallel and perpendicular to bres,
respectively; G12 and n12 are the shear modulus and Poisson ratio,
respectively.
The stressestrain relationship for any layer of the laminate can
be written as:

(16d)

3.3. Weak formulation

1
U
2

k
Ex

k
Ex ;


n0


5X
4
k
bQ 55 zk  zk1  2 ln z3k  z3k1 :
4
3h
k1

where n0 is the number of layers and zk and zk1 are the z-coordinates of the top and bottom of the kth layer as shown in
Fig. 2.
It is well known that the issue of couplings appear in laminates
with arbitrary lay-up, thus the in-plane and out-of-plane problems
need to be solved together. However, Hajianmaleki and Qatu (2011,
2012) showed that the purely in-plane behaviours of laminated
curved beams can be accurately achieved with any of stacking
sequence by using equivalent modulus of elasticity of each lamina.
The equivalent modulus of elasticity of each lamina is found based
on the following equation:

A55

(13a)

Substituting Eqs. (6)e(8) into the above energy expression

yields the strain energy functional in terms of the slope and
displacements

1
U
2

ZL 



w2
w 0
2
j D11 j0
A11 u0
2B11 u0
R
R



u 2
dx:
A55 w0 j 
R

(19)

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A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

The work done by the distributed external force components px

in the tangential direction and pz in the normal direction, the
distributed moment m, and the external axial force P0, which is
applied through the centroid, can be written as:

V 


ZL 
1 
u 2
px u pz w mj P0 w0 
dx:
2
R

(20)

The principle of minimum total potential energy can be stated

as:

0 dP dU V:

(21)

By substituting Eqs. (19) and (20) into Eq. (21), the following
weak statement is obtained:

ZL 




A55  0
u
P 
u
 px 0 w0 
du
w j
R
R
R
R

4.1. Isogeometric nite element model

In order to develop the NURBS-based nite element model, a
typical element of laminated composite curved beam is considered,
b e denote the curvilinear and parametric
as shown in Fig. 3 (Ue and U
domains of the element, respectively). The geometry X (X,Z) of
curved beam is dened in the rectangular physical space based on
NURBS functions and control points as shown in Eq. (4). The
arrangement of NURBS coordinates in Eq. (4) is inverted into the
nite element notation for the case of one-dimensional model
(Cottrell et al., 2009). The geometry and the solution eld are
described as follows:

X Xx

nen
X



n
A11  0 w B11 0
u

u
j  pz dw A55 w0 j 
R
R
R
R
o
n

o

n
w
u
0
0
0
0
B11 j du A55 w j 
 m dj A11 u
R
R


o 
uo 0 n
w
0
0
0
0
dw B11 u
D11 j dj dx:
 P0 w 
R
R
(22)

(25)

Ni xui ;

(26)

i1

where Pi (Xi,Zi) are the control points and the coefcients

ui (ui,wi,ji) are denoted as control variables, nen is the number of
control points for each element. In IGA, the number of control
points per element is determined as the order of basis functions
plus one (nen p 1). The curvilinear domain (arc length), the
Jacobian of transformation from the curvilinear space to the parametric space and the radius of curvature are calculated, respectively, as follows:

3.4. Governing equations

x0Zxi1

The equilibrium equations of the present study can be obtained

by integrating the derivatives of the varied quantities by parts and
collecting the coefcients of du, dw and dj:

Ni xPi ;

i1

uzux

nen
X

xx
x0 xi

"

dX
dx0

2

dZ

dx0

2 #12
dx0 ;

(27)


00
w0
A 
u
P 
u
px  0 w0  ;
A11 u0
 B11 j  55 w0 j 
R
R
R
R
R
(23a)


A11  0 w B11 0
u 0
u 0

u
j  A55 w0 j 
pz  P0 w0 
;
R
R
R
R
R
(23b)


00
w0
u
m:
 D11 j A55 w0 j 
B11 u0
R
R

(23c)

The natural boundary conditions are of the form:


w
B11 j0 ;
du : A11 u0
R

(24a)



u
u
 P0 w0  ;
dw : A55 w0 j 
R
R

(24b)


w
D11 j0 :
dj : B11 u0
R

(24c)

4. Isogeometric formulation
The NURBS basis functions constructed become nite element
basis functions for the approximate displacement eld. The degreeof-freedoms (DOFs) are the control variables and located at the
control points. The number of nite elements are computed as the
number of non-zero knot spans.

Fig. 3. Geometrical and afne mappings for integration by Gaussian quadrature on

NURBS elements of curved beam.

A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

dx

Jx
dx

"

dX
dx

2

dZ

dx

2 #12

ZLe1

(28)

G22
ij

Ni0 Nj0 dx;

223

(32h)

Le

dX d2 Z dZ d2 X

dx dx2 dx dx2

Rx J 3

!1
:

(29)

In the following, substituting the control variables in Eq. (26)

into the weak statement in Eq. (22), the nite element model of
the typical element can be expressed as:

K  P0 Gu F;

ZLe1 
G12
ij

K11
@4 K21
K31

K12
K22
K32

3
2 11
K13
G
K23 5  P0 4 G21
K33
0

G12
G22
0

(31)
where K, G and F are the element stiffness matrix, the element
geometric stiffness matrix and the element force vector, respectively. For each of the possible cases, the certain parameters will not
be needed. For example, in the bending analysis, the axial force P0
and the geometric stiffness matrix G are removed. In case of
buckling analysis, the element force vector F is ignored, then the
model becomes a standard eigenvalue problem. The explicit forms
of K, G and F are given by

Kij11


ZLe1 
A
A11 Ni0 Nj0 55
dx;

N
N
i
j
R2

(32a)

(32i)

ZLe1
Fi1

(30)

318 9 8 1 9
< u = <F =
0
0 5A w F2 ;
: ; : 3;
J
F
0


1
Ni Nj0 dx;
R

Le

px Ni dx;

(32j)

pz Ni dx;

(32k)

mNi dx:

(32l)

Le

or

02

ZLe1
Fi2

Le

ZLe1
Fi3

Le

The assembly follows the standard nite element procedure.

The standard GausseLegendre quadrature is used for numerical
integration over the parametric domain. In IGA, each element in the
parametric space is transformed into the parent element through
an afne mapping. The parametric coordinate of quadrature point
b eU
b e xi ; xi1  is transformed from its reference element
x2 U
~ e as follows:
coordinate ~x2U

1
x
 xi ~x xi1 xi :
2 i1

(33)

Le

Kij22


ZLe1 
A11
0 0

N
N

A
N
N
55
i
j
i j dx;
R2

4.2. Renements

(32b)

Le

Kij33

ZLe1 

D11 Ni0 Nj0 A55 Ni Nj dx;

(32c)

Le

Kij12


ZLe1 
A11 0
A
Ni Nj  55 Ni Nj0 dx;
R
R

(32d)

Le

Kij13

ZLe1 



A55
Ni Nj B11 Ni0 Nj0 dx;
R

(32e)

Le

Kij23


ZLe1 
B
A55 Ni0 Nj 11 Ni Nj0 dx;

(32f)

It is well known in FEA that the accuracy in solutions increases

by using renement strategies. In NURBS-based isogeometric
modelling, it is interesting that the basis functions could be
enriched by the knot insertion and the order elevation while leaving
the geometry unchanged. These two methods could be efciently
utilized in IGA. The insertion of new knot values corresponds to hrenement of the traditional FEA since the number of elements is
raised. The order elevation has common features with the classical
p-renement strategy in FEA because it increases the polynomial
order of the basis functions. When the order of basis functions is
elevated, the multiplicity of knot values increases correspondingly
in order to preserve the continuity across elements. Subsequently
new knots are inserted in non-zero knot spans, the continuity
across the new elements is reduced by one Cp1. This mechanism of
mesh renement in analysis is known as k-renement. In other
words, k-renement is attained by utilizing h-renement on prenement meshes. In the present analyses, the high order krenement meshes are mainly used. The isogeometric renements
of a curved beam were described in detail in Luu et al. (2015).

Le

5. Numerical results

ZLe1
G11
ij
Le

1
Ni Nj dx;
R2

(32g)

In order to validate the accuracy and applicability of the IGA

framework developed by this study, a number of numerical examples are presented for bending and buckling analyses of laminated composite curved beams with arc length L, span length l and

224

A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

rise f. The following material properties are chosen for the composite utilized in the laminate stacking sequences:
 Material 1 (Hajianmaleki and Qatu, 2012): E1 138 GPa,
E2 8.96 GPa, n12 0.3, G12 7.1 GPa and G13 G23 3.44 GPa.
 Material 2: E1/E2 15, n12 0.25, G12 G13 0.6E2 and
G23 0.5E2.
For convenience, the following non-dimensional terms are used
in the numerical results:
 Non-dimensional maximum deection:

.

10wE bh3 p L4
n
1
.
w
3
wE1 bh M0 l2

for circular beams under the uniform normal load pn ;

for elliptic beams under the bending moment M0 :

 Non-dimensional critical buckling load of circular curved

beams:

P cr

.

12P L2 Ebh3
cr
.

12Pcr L2 E2 bh3

for isotropic material;

for composite materials:

(35)

 Non-dimensional critical buckling load of parabolic curved

beams:

qcr

.

12q l3 Ebh3
cr
.

12qcr l3 E2 bh3

(2012) are also tabulated in Table 1. The 3D nite element solutions were obtained by using the ANSYS nite element code
SOLID46. It is seen that the present results are in good agreement
with both of the solutions given in the study of Hajianmaleki and
Qatu (Hajianmaleki and Qatu, 2012). From Table 1, it is a denite
strength point that renement strategies allow IGA to converge
efciently to the expected results. It can be realized from the rst
line of Table 1 that by using the h-renement, the accuracy of the
present IGA solution increases as the number of elements is
increased from 2 to 64. The more efcient technique, k-renement
creating higher order, higher continuity of NURBS basis functions
gives faster convergence speeds. With the aid of the k-renement,

for isotropic material;

for composite materials:

(36)

The full integration is implemented on one element at a time.

The shear and membrane locking involving in quadratic NURBS
curved beam elements is gradually alleviated when the order of
NURBS basis functions elevates. In this research, the authors are
interested in high order NURBS elements where the locking almost
disappears. Detailed studies on shear and membrane locking
occurring in NURBS Timoshenko curved elements were reported by
Adam et al. (2014) and Bouclier et al. (2012).
5.1. Bending analysis
A cantilever anti-symmetric cross-ply [0/90] laminated circular
curved beam subjected to uniform normal load pn is considered as
the rst example. The material properties are assumed to be Material 1, the length-to-thickness ratio (slenderness ratio) L/h is equal
to 20 and the length-to-radius ratio (deepness ratio) L/R is equal to
1. The convergence rate of the non-dimensional maximum deection is presented in Table 1 with various orders of NURBS basis
functions. Maximal Cp1 continuity across element boundaries is
maintained through renement processes. Fig. 4(a)e(d) show the
NURBS curves with control polygon for two element meshes of
quadratic to quintic orders, respectively, used herein to model the
circular curved beam. For verication purpose, the numerical results of the general differential quadrature (GDQ) analysis and 3D
nite element analysis (3D FEA) given by Hajianmaleki and Qatu

(34)

the non-dimensional maximum deection converges with two

quintic elements, four quartic elements or sixteen cubic elements
when the number of signicant gures is six. It should be noted
that the two quintic NURBS elements with C4 continuity at internal
element boundary are generated from seven control points which
correspond to 7  3 21 DOFs, as shown in Fig. 4(d). Two C0
continuous NURBS element meshes with several different polynomial orders obtained by p-renement are employed to produce
the results in Table 2. For comparison, the numerical results achieved by corresponding k-rened meshes with maximal Cp1 continuity are also listed. The NURBS models used are plotted in Fig. 4.
Note that two adjacent elements share r 1 control points if they
are Cr continuous across their common boundary. It can be seen
from Table 2 that p-rened meshes perform better than their
higher continuity counterparts. However, the total number of DOFs
due to k-renement process is less than those of p-renement. For
more thorough comparisons between p- and k-renement
schemes, see Lee and Park (2013).
To demonstrate the accuracy and validity of this study further,
the non-dimensional maximum deections of cantilever laminated
circular curved beams with symmetric cross-ply [0/90]s, antisymmetric cross-ply [0/90] and [45]2 lay-ups are given for
different length-to-radius ratios in Table 3. Unlike the cross-ply
laminates which can have the bending-stretching coupling only,
in laminated composite beams with [45]2 lay-up, the bendingstretching, bending-twisting and stretching-twisting couplings all
exist. Two quintic NURBS elements are used to generate the results
in Table 3. Isogeometric models of two quintic elements are shown
in Fig. 5. It is observed from Table 3 that the prediction of the
present model is in good agreement with the GDQ and 3D FEA
results given in the previous study (Hajianmaleki and Qatu, 2012)
for all cases considered. Therefore, one can realize from Table 3 that
by using the present NURBS-based IGA model, accurate results for
the in-plane structural behaviours of laminated composite curved
beams can be achieved with any kind of stacking sequences.
Since the radius of curvature R of curved beams is calculated
based on NURBS in Eq. (29) at each Gauss point, the variable curvature effect is included in the present analysis framework. A
cantilever anti-symmetric cross-ply [0/90] laminated quarterelliptic curved beam under pure bending is considered for

A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

225

Table 1
Convergence rate of non-dimensional maximum deection for the cantilever cross-ply [0/90] laminated circular curved beam under the uniform normal load using NURBSbased h- and k-renement schemes (Material 1 with L/R 1 and L/h 20).
Present IGA
p

Number of elements

2
3
4
5

16

32

64

26.5566
55.0712
55.5220
55.5243

51.9199
55.5108
55.5243
55.5243

55.2914
55.5241
55.5243
55.5243

55.5098
55.5243
55.5243
55.5243

55.5234
55.5243
55.5243
55.5243

55.5243
55.5243
55.5243
55.5243

Hajianmaleki and
Qatu (2012)

ANSYS

55.52

55.74

the radius-to-thickness ratio a/h 100 is used. The results presented in Table 4 are computed by using four C4 quintic elements.
The present IGA results are compared with the analytical solution
obtained by Lin and Hsieh (2007) in Table 4 for quarter-elliptic
curved beams with various aspect ratios (a/b). A good agreement
between these two solutions can be observed. The maximum difference between the two solutions is 0.3 % for four signicant
gures.
5.2. Buckling analysis

Fig. 4. NURBS curves with control point polygon for two equal element meshes used
to model the circular beam with L/R 1. (a) to (d) Quadratic to quintic NURBS with
maximal Cp1 continuity, (e) to (h) quadratic to quintic NURBS with C0 continuity.

investigating the maximum deection. The schematic of quarterelliptic curved beam is illustrated along with its isogeometric
model of one quintic element in Fig. 6. The major and minor radii of
the quarter-elliptic curved beam are denoted as a and b, respectively. The moment M0 is applied at the free end. Material 2 with

Circular curved beams under uniform compression p0 and

parabolic curved beams subjected to a vertical load q0 uniformly
distributed along the span are considered to perform the buckling
analysis. The congurations of the circular and parabolic curved
beams are depicted in Figs. 7 and 8, respectively. In those curved
beams, the loadings induce no shear or bending, but axial
compressive force in the tangential direction. For the circular
curved beam, the axial compressive force is constant through the
beam and given as P0 p0R. On the other hand, in the parabolic
curved beam, the axial compressive force varies with position along
the length of the beam (Tadjbakhsh, 1981). In this case, the axial
force is calculated based on the NURBS geometry as follows:

"
 #12

l2
dZ dx 2
1
P0 x q0
dx dX
8f

(37)

The effect of variable axial force is integrated along with the

Table 2
Results of non-dimensional maximum deection using two C0 and Cp1 continuous
NURBS elements generated by p- and k-renements respectively.
Continuity
0

C
Cp1

p2

p3

p4

p5

28.8901
26.5566

55.2332
55.0712

55.5243
55.5220

55.5243
55.5243

Table 3
Non-dimensional maximum deections of cantilever laminated circular curved
beams (Material 1 with L/h 20).
Lay-up

Reference

L/R 0.6

L/R 1

L/R 2

[0/90]s

Present IGA
Hajianmaleki and Qatu (2012)
ANSYS
Present IGA
Hajianmaleki and Qatu (2012)
ANSYS
Present IGA
Hajianmaleki and Qatu (2012)
ANSYS

16.52
16.52
16.51
62.52
62.52
62.63
124.9
124.9
124.1

14.78
14.78
14.81
55.52
55.52
55.74
112.1
112.1
111.3

8.736
8.770
8.789
31.99
32.66
32.37
66.28
66.28
65.66

[0/90]

[45]2

Fig. 5. NURBS meshes of two elements with quintic order and control point polygons
of circular beams. (a) and (b) 2 C4 elements with X f0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1=2; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1g
and (c) 2 C0 elements with X f0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1=2; 1=2; 1=2; 1=2; 1=2; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1g.

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A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

Fig. 6. Schematic of quarter-elliptic curved beam under pure bending and their geometric modelling by quintic NURBS with the knot vector X f0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 0; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1; 1g.

Table 4
Non-dimensional maximum deections of cantilever cross-ply [0/90] elliptic beams
under pure bending (Material 2 with l/h 100).
b/a

Present IGA

Lin and Hsieh (2007)

0.4
0.6
0.8
1

35.57
39.39
45.84
52.71

35.55
39.39
45.86
52.74

Fig. 7. Schematic of a clampedeclamped circular beam under uniform compression p0.

geometric stiffness matrix in Eqs. (32g)e(32i), then the lowest

eigenvalue becomes the critical buckling load qcr.
For verication purpose, the non-dimensional critical buckling
loads of the present isogeometric framework are compared with

numerical results obtained by Oztrk

et al. (2006), Kang et al.
(1996) and Timoshenko and Gere (1961) for the isotropic circular
curved beams and Dinnik (1946) for the isotropic parabolic curved
beams in Table 5. The solutions of Dinnik (1946) were given in the
book of Timoshenko and Gere (1961). The EulereBernoulli beam
theory was used in the previous studies (Dinnik, 1946; Kang et al.,

1996; Oztrk
et al., 2006; Timoshenko and Gere, 1961), while the
present critical buckling loads are calculated for the curved beams
with very high slenderness to reduce the shear deformation effect
to zero. Isogeometric models of eight C4 quintic elements are use to
produce the results. It is possible to see a good agreement between
the present results with the previous ones. In the buckling analysis
of laminated composite curved beams, all laminated are assumed
to be made of Material 2.
5.2.1. Circular curved beams under uniform compression
The buckling behaviour is investigated for laminated composite
circular curved beams under uniform compression. The convergence study of the non-dimensional critical buckling load P cr for
the clampedeclamped anti-symmetric cross-ply [0/90] laminated

Fig. 8. Schematic and quintic NURBS model of a clampedeclamped parabolic curved

beam under load q0 uniformly distributed along the span.

circular beam (L/R p/3, L/h 10 and E1/E2 15) is illustrated in

Fig. 9. It is conrmed again that with high order NURBS elements
generated by the k-renement technique, the convergence speed is
improved signicantly. It is found that the convergent result for the
six signicant gures is yielded by using eight quintic elements or
sixteen quartic elements with maximal continuity across element
boundaries. Table 6 shows the effects of order and continuity of
NURBS basis functions on the results of non-dimensional buckling
load for the [0/90] laminated circular beam. Meshes of two NURBS
elements are considered. One can see again that the results get
better when the continuity at the element boundary is lower for a
given polynomial order and a certain number of elements.
For illustration, the non-dimensional critical buckling loads of
the laminated circular beams are tabulated in Table 7 for different
lay-ups, boundary conditions and length-to-radius ratios. Meshes
of eight quintic elements with maximal C4 continuity across
element boundaries is used to generate the present results in
Table 7. The length-to-thickness ratio L/h is 10. It is clear from
Table 7 that all the effects of boundary condition, laminate lay-up
and length-to-radius ratio on the non-dimensional critical load
are signicant. The variation of non-dimensional buckling loads
with respect to the length-to-thickness ratio is illustrated in Fig. 10

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227

Table 5
Non-dimensional critical buckling loads for isotropic circular curved beams (L/R p/3 and L/h 200) and isotropic parabolic curved beams (f/l 0.2 and l/h 200).
Geometry

Buckling load

Reference

Method

Clampedeclamped

Hingedehinged

Circular

P cr

Parabolic

qcr

Present

Oztrk
et al. (2006)
Kang et al. (1996)
Timoshenko and Gere (1961)
Present
Dinnik (1946)

IGA
FEM
DQM
Exact
IGA
e

82.15
82.19
80.42
80.38
103.1
101

39.40
e
38.49
38.38
46.09
45.4

phenomenon is known as buckling mode transition (Kim et al.,

2005b). The buckling mode transitions are seen to occur in
Fig. 10(a) and (b) for the clampedeclamped and hingedehinged [0/
90] laminated circular curved beams when the length-to-radius
ratio is close to 0.45 and 0.56, respectively. The typical symmetric
and anti-symmetric buckling mode shapes corresponding to the [0/

Fig. 9. Convergence rate of the non-dimensional critical load for the clampedeclamped cross-ply [0/90] laminated circular curved beam with respect to the NURBS
order (L/R p/3 and L/h 10).

for the anti-symmetric cross-ply laminates. The anti-symmetric

buckling mode is described together with the symmetric one. It is
found from Fig. 10 when the L/R ratio varies, the fundamental
buckling mode changes from the symmetric shape to the antisymmetric one and there exists a critical buckling load when the
curved beams can buckle in either one of the two modes. This

Table 6
Results of non-dimensional critical buckling load P cr for the clampedeclamped
cross-ply [0/90] laminated circular curved beam using two elements of various orders and continuities of NURBS basis functions (Material 1 with L/R 1 and L/
h 20).
Continuity

p2

p3

p4

p5

C0
C1
C2
C3
C4

362.40
580.87
e
e
e

202.26
211.27
314.35
e
e

182.96
183.29
184.88
205.24
e

181.24
181.25
181.39
181.63
186.58

Table 7
Non-dimensional critical buckling loads P cr of laminated circular curved beams
(Material 2 with L/h 10).
Boundary condition

L/R

[0/90/0]

[0/90]

[45/45]

[0/45/90]s

Clampedeclamped

p/3
2p/3
p
p/3
2p/3
p

359.75
375.45
386.62
280.42
272.79
230.66

181.18
190.27
197.84
108.47
107.63
96.924

98.323
102.93
106.76
52.819
51.471
43.726

301.80
315.26
325.25
217.45
211.66
179.42

Hingedehinged

Fig. 10. Variation of the non-dimensional critical loads with respect to the deepness
ratio for [0/90] laminated circular curved beams (L/h 10).

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A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

Fig. 11. The anti-symmetric and symmetric buckling mode shapes of [0/90] laminated circular curved beams (L/R p/3 and L/h 10).

90] laminated circular curved beams with the length-to-radius

ratio L/R p/3 are depicted in Fig. 11.
5.2.2. Parabolic curved beams under uniformly distributed vertical
load
In our nal example, the buckling analysis of laminated composite parabolic curved beams under uniformly distributed vertical
load is performed. The non-dimensional critical buckling loads qcr
of laminated parabolic curved beams are presented in Table 8 with
various rise-to-span ratios. Eight C4 quintic NURBS elements are
also used in the calculations. The span-to-thickness l/h is equal to
10. The buckling mode transitions are also observed in Fig. 12(a)
and (b) for the anti-symmetric cross-ply [0/90] laminated parabolic
curved beams with clampedeclamped and hingedehinged
boundary conditions, respectively. From Fig. 12(a), it is seen that the
clampedeclamped parabolic curved beam having a value of rise-tospan ratio below around 0.055 buckles in symmetric mode and for
values greater than this, the buckling mode shape is antisymmetric. Particularly, at this value the beam can buckle in
either mode. For the hingedehinged parabolic curved beam, the
buckling mode transition is seen to occur when the value of rise-tospan ratio is around 0.07, as shown in Fig. 12(b). The symmetric and
anti-symmetric buckling mode shapes of the [0/90] laminated
parabolic curved beams when the rise-to-span ratio f/l 0.2 are
illustrated in Fig. 13.
The variation of non-dimensional critical buckling load for the
clampedeclamped laminated parabolic curved beam with respect
to the rise-to-span ratio for different lay-up, span-to-thickness and
orthotropy ratios is shown in Figs. 14e16, respectively. From these
gures, it is found that the critical buckling load is maximum in a
laminated parabolic curved beam with greater rise-to-span ratio
when the lay-up shifts from anti-symmetric angle-ply [45/45]
with to anti-symmetric cross-ply [0/90] to quasi-isotropic [0/45/
45/90]s to symmetric cross-ply [0/90/0], or the beam becomes
Table 8
Non-dimensional critical buckling loads qcr of laminated parabolic curved beams
(Material 2 with l/h 10).
Boundary condition

f/l

[0/90/0]

[0/90]

[45/45]

[0/45/90]s

Clampedeclamped

0.2
0.3
0.4
0.2
0.3
0.4

504.69
650.48
710.04
357.88
414.33
407.70

241.10
295.70
304.80
132.46
148.70
141.61

127.38
152.41
153.09
62.827
68.343
62.967

418.11
532.14
571.25
272.72
310.68
300.10

Hingedehinged

Fig. 12. Variation of non-dimensional buckling loads with respect to the rise-to-span
ratio for [0/90] laminated composite parabolic curved beams (l/h 10).

A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

229

Fig. 13. The anti-symmetric and symmetric buckling mode shapes of [0/90] laminated parabolic curved beams (f/l 0.2 and l/h 10).

thicker or made of laminate with higher orthotropy ratio. (1) The

maximum critical buckling loads are found for the symmetric
cross-ply [0/90/0], quasi-isotropic [0/45/45/90]s, anti-symmetric
cross-ply [0/90] and anti-symmetric angle-ply [45/45] laminated parabolic curved beams when the rise-to-span ratios are
0.45, 0.42, 0.37 and 0.35, respectively, in Fig. 14. (2) The maximum
critical buckling loads are found for the [0/90] laminated parabolic
curved beam with three typical span-to-thickness ratio l/h 5, 10
and 50 when the rise-to-span ratios are 0.45, 0.37 and 0.33,
respectively, in Fig. 15. The values of rise-to-span ratio corresponding to the maximum critical buckling load of [0/90] laminated parabolic curved beam with E1/E2 5, 15 and 40 are 0.36, 0.37
and 0.40, respectively, in Fig. 16.
6. Conclusions
The isogeometric analysis framework has been developed based
on the shear deformable curved beam theory to study the bending
and buckling behaviours of laminated composite curved beams
with arbitrary lay-up and curvature. The proposed model uses the
deep formulation along with the equivalent lamina modulus for

Fig. 14. Variation of non-dimensional buckling loads with respect to the rise-to-span
ratio for clampedeclamped laminated composite parabolic curved beams with
different lay-ups (l/h 10).

calculation of ABD parameters. The convergence study of the present IGA has been carried out to conrm the efciency and fast
convergence speed of the high-order NURBS elements. The validity
of the proposed framework has been demonstrated through the
comparison of the present results with the other solutions available
in the literature. The non-dimensional critical buckling loads and
the mode shapes of laminated circular curved beams under uniform compression and the parabolic curved beams subjected to
uniformly distributed vertical load along the span have been presented as benchmark solutions. The parametric study on the
buckling of the laminated circular and parabolic curved beams have
been performed. Based on the theoretical developments and numerical results, the following remarks can be made:
(i) In the present isogeometric formulation, the effects of variable curvature and variable axial force are automatically
included through the NURBS-based calculations. This is
different from the previous literature when separate complex equations are used to represent arc length and curvature
of non-circular curved beams. With the new approach, the

Fig. 15. Variation of non-dimensional buckling loads with respect to the rise-to-span
ratio for clampedeclamped [0/90] laminated composite parabolic curved beams
with different length-to-thickness ratios.

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A.-T. Luu et al. / European Journal of Mechanics A/Solids 54 (2015) 218e231

Fig. 16. Variation of non-dimensional buckling loads with respect to the rise-to-span ratio for clampedeclamped [0/90] laminated composite parabolic curved beams with different
orthotropy ratios (Material 2 with different ratios of E1/E2 and l/h 10).

gap between the bending and buckling analyses of curved

beams with constant curvature and those with variable
curvature is eliminated.
(ii) The buckling mode transition phenomenon is observed to
occur in both the circular and parabolic curved beams. The
fundamental buckling mode changes from the symmetric to
the anti-symmetric shape when the length-to-radius ratio of
the circular curved beams or the rise-to-span ratio of the
parabolic curved beams varies. The symmetric buckling
mode appears only in very shallow curved beams (at curved
beams) while the anti-symmetric mode governs the buckling
behaviour in most of curved beams.
(iii) In the buckling analysis of the laminated parabolic curved
beam, the maximum critical load for varied rise-to-span ratio
depends not only on the lay-up but also the span-tothickness ratio and the orthotropy ratio. The beam tends to
be deeper when it becomes stiffer, thicker or is made of
laminated composite with higher anisotropic effect for the
maximum critical buckling load.
Acknowledgements
This research was supported by a grant (NRF2015R1A2A1A01007535) from NRF (National Research Foundation
of Korea) funded by MEST (Ministry of Education and Science
Technology) of Korean government.
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