Buckling Analysis of Laminated Composite Plates Using Higher Order Semi—Analytical Finite Strip Method

Abstract

Rectangular plates made of laminated composite material because of the advantageously high strength and stiffness to weight ratio are used frequently as structural component in various branches of engineering, chief of which are aerospace and marine engineering. Design concepts of these plates that lead to the increase in the buckling load can directly lower the structural cost and/or weight. The finite strip method is one of a number of procedures which can be used to solve the buckling problem of plate structures. In the present work the main concern is with the buckling behavior of plates with simply supported ends subjected to uni-axial pure compression loads. The solution is sought by implementing the higher order semi-analytical finite strip method which incorporates additional degrees of freedom for each nodal line by using Reddy's higher order plate theory. Therefore the current method is more universal in dealing with different plate thicknesses. In addition, in this semi-analytical finite strip method, all the displacements are postulated by the appropriate harmonic shape functions in the longitudinal direction and polynomial interpolation functions in the transverse direction. The solution is based on the concept of principle of minimum potential energy and an eigen-value analysis is subsequently carried out. From the presented results it can be concluded that the higher order semi-analytical finite strip method is very reliable for the preliminary design of composite plates especially in the case of buckling analysis of relatively thick plates.

On the buckling analysis of isotropic, transversely isotropic, and laminated rectangular plates via Reddy plate theory: an exact closed-form procedure

“…Introducing equations ( 27) and ( 28) into equations (25) and substituting the resulting equations into the arbitrary boundary conditions along the edges x 2 ¼ 0 and x 2 ¼ b lead to a set of algebraic equations in terms of the constants C m1 through C m 8 . According to equation (8), the classical boundary conditions to be applied for an edge parallel to the x 1 -axis are given by Simply supported edge :…”

“…Ni et al [24] applied the Rayleigh-Ritz method to study the buckling analysis of rectangular laminated composite plates with arbitrary edge supports subjected to bi-axial compression loading. Ovesy and Ghannadpour [25] investigated the buckling behaviour of laminated composite plates by the use of finite strip method and based on the TSDT. Nali et al [26] utilized the FEM to analyse the buckling of laminated anisotropic plates subjected to combined bi-axial/shear loading.…”

Buckling of fiber metal laminated plates – numerical and experimental studies

“…The different experimental methods to determine critical buckling loads of composite plates and columns were explored by Chailleux et al (1975). Based on the higher order semi-analytical finite strip method, Ovesy et al (2010) investigated the buckling behavior of laminated composite plates. The buckling and the post-buckling response of sandwich plates were reported by Hao et al (2000) based on the finite element method (FEM).…”

Benchmark solutions of the free vibration of simply supported laminated composite plates

“…Their static, buckling and free vibration behavior is of important to the designers and thus has been received great attentions [1,2]. Among various types of laminations, the mid-plane symmetric laminates are widely used in practice.…”

“…Analytical solutions are rarely available even for rectangular anisotropic plates with simple supported boundary conditions. Therefore, various approximate approaches [1][2][3][4] and numerical methods [5][6][7][8][9] have been employed for solutions.…”