Improved thermo-mechanical-viscoelastic analysis of laminated composite structures via the enhanced Lo–Christensen–Wu theory in the laplace domain

An enhanced Lo–Christensen–Wu (LCW) theory is defined in the Laplace domain to predict the thermo-mechanical-viscoelastic behavior of long-term composite structures. The primary objective herein is to systematically extract the computational benefits of the conventional LCW and fifth-order zigzag model via the mixed variational theorem (MVT). Furthermore, the Laplace transform is employed to circumvent the numerical complexity of viscoelastic analysis. The relationships between the two fields were derived using the MVT constraint equations in the Laplace domain. Consequently, the proposed theory has the C⁰-based computational benefits as the conventional LCW, while improving the solution accuracy for long-term thermo-mechanical-viscoelastic behaviors.