Free vibration analysis of composite panels considering correlations of spatially distributed uncertain parameters.

• Uncertainty of heterogeneity of composites is characterized. • The polynomial chaos is extended to describe the random field of composite parameters with spatial distributed uncertainty. • The correlation between elastic parameters is represented by using the Copula function. Considering the heterogeneity and randomness in the elastic performance of composite materials, a novel method is proposed for vibration analysis of composites with spatially distributed uncertain parameters. Firstly, the polynomial chaos expansion is used to characterizing the material field, which is expressed as the product of the deterministic coefficient and the basis function of polynomial chaos, the coefficient is expanded by using orthogonal polynomial to represent the spatially distributed heterogeneous of composites. Secondly, the correlation of elastic parameters is expressed by using Copula function. Finally, according to the non-intrusive method, the probabilistic characteristics of the composite structure with spatially distributed uncertain parameters are obtained. The method is implemented for free vibration analysis of a composite panel, results show that the variability of the standard deviation of the dynamics performance is dependent on the correlation between the elastic parameters of composites. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]