Vibration and buckling analysis of bio-inspired helicoidal composite plates with crack using XIGA

Abstract

Bio-inspired helicoidal composite laminates offer enhanced damage tolerance and superior mechanical performance, however, their vibration and buckling behavior in the presence of cracks remains insufficiently understood. Therefore, this study investigates the free vibration and buckling responses of cracked bio-inspired laminated composite plates using an extended isogeometric analysis (XIGA) framework. Reddy’s higher-order shear deformation theory is employed to accurately capture interlaminar stresses and kinematic behavior. The XIGA framework enables efficient modeling of displacement discontinuities associated with cracks while preserving precise geometric representation and field approximation, without mesh dependency. Consequently, the novelty of this work lies in the integration of bio-inspired helicoidal laminate configurations with XIGA-based crack modeling to perform an analysis of vibration and buckling behavior, which has not been previously reported. Three helicoidal configurations, including helicoidal exponential (HE), helicoidal recursive (HR), and helicoidal semicircular (HS), are examined for different plate geometries and crack lengths. The results indicate that increasing crack length leads to a reduction in both natural frequencies and critical buckling loads, with varying sensitivity across configurations. The HS configuration exhibits the most significant reduction in natural frequencies, whereas the HR configuration demonstrates comparatively better resistance. In terms of buckling behavior, the HR configuration shows the highest reduction for circular plates but the lowest for square plates. These findings provide new insights into the damage-sensitive response of bio-inspired composites and offer valuable guidance for the design of resilient structures in aerospace, marine, and automobile engineering applications.