Dynamic analysis of rotating composite beam using three-dimensional co-rotational formulation

The purpose of this paper is to investigate a largely deflected and highly spinning 3-D beam structure in a co-rotational framework. The application of the rotating effect, especially in helicopter blades, is newly developed based on the co-rotational method, one of the favored approaches for interpreting geometric nonlinearity. Essential system matrices for the rotating beam, such as centrifugal and gyroscopic matrices, are derived from Hamilton’s principle. Moreover, the resulting formulation is extended to the co-rotational framework. Practical studies of helicopter blades are conducted to understand the dynamic responses resulting from structural coupling caused by composite materials and rotation. The static and dynamic analyses of flexible composite beams under high-speed rotation are verified through various numerical examples. It is concluded that the proposed method, which uses only a few core system matrices and vectors rather than full systems from rotating motion, can achieve the same high numerical accuracy as the geometrically exact beam method.