Variational asymptotic modeling of composite beams with spanwise heterogeneity

This paper is concerned with modeling composite beams with spanwise heterogeneity. We first formulate the original three-dimensional problem in an intrinsic form which admits a geometrically exact formulation. Taking advantage of slenderness of beam structure and smallness of heterogeneity, we use the variational asymptotic method to systematically obtain an effective beam model through simultaneous homogenization and dimensional reduction. This approach is implemented in the commercial code VABS using the finite element technique for the purpose of dealing with composite beams with spanwise heterogeneity in real applications. A few examples are used to demonstrate the capability of this new model.