Bending and free vibration analysis of multilayered solar cell plates with elastic restraints using a higher-order discrete shear gap quadrilateral element
Abstract
This paper presents the bending and free-vibration analyses of multilayered solar cell plates with elastic restraints using a higher-order Discrete Shear Gap (DSG) quadrilateral element. The solar cell is modeled as a laminated plate with perfectly bonded isotropic layers. The formulation uses a Higher-order Shear Deformation Theory (HSDT) for the displacement field and the DSG method to alleviate shear locking in thin-plate analysis. The elastic boundary restraints are represented by distributed translational and rotational springs along the plate edges. The static deflections and stresses are obtained from the corresponding equilibrium equations, while the natural frequencies and mode shapes are calculated by solving the generalized eigenvalue problem. The results show that the proposed element gives accurate and stable predictions for the bending and vibration responses of multilayered solar cell plates and that the elastic restraints significantly affect the structural responses. The specific contribution is a four-node higher-order DSG quadrilateral formulation that combines HSDT kinematics with distributed translational and rotational edge springs for the unified bending and free-vibration analysis of multilayered solar cell plates. In the frequency benchmark, the maximum discrepancy relative to the reported Isogeometric Analysis (IGA), analytical, and ANSYS solutions is 1.862%, demonstrating the accuracy of the formulation.
Keywords
multilayered solar cell plate; static bending; free vibration; higher-order discrete shear gap element; elastic edge restraints
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
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