The use of composite materials in industry has increased over the years. Because of their exceptional specific strength, composites offer the potential to solve many problems that require the use of rigid but lightweight structures. One of the many ways to use composites is also to design a lightweight composite shaft. In this study, we focused on developing an analytical solution to determine the response of a composite shaft to various loads. The derived relationships were used to calculate torsional and axial deformations, which were qualitatively compared with numerical analysis by finite element method using Abaqus/CAE software environment. In addition, we developed an analytical model to account for the additional thermal loading. It was found that the results of both methods are reasonably consistent, but still differ due to the different methodology used to solve composite problems. The derived theory is the basis for determining the responses to different loads of geometrically similar composite structures.
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