Abstract
Thermal deformations in symmetric and antisymmetric cross-ply laminated beams subjected to partial heating are investigated. Some regions of the beam are subjected to thermal loads and the others are thermally unloaded (Delta T = 0). The thermal field is expressed in terms of Heaviside discontinuity functions. The state space approach along with Jordan canonical form is used to generate exact solutions for the thermoelastic response of beams for arbitrary boundary conditions. A first order shear deformation theory is used in the analysis. Deflections are computed for beams subjected to partial heating with various lamination schemes and boundary conditions undergoing uniform and linearly varying temperature through the thickness. Exact thermal deflection curves are presented for beams under step-wise varying temperature field. The solutions presented in this study can readily be used to investigate the thermoelastic behavior of narrow chip-substrate structure, laminated member in laser cutting, composite link in hypersonic vehicle, and etc.