THREE-DIMENSIONAL STRESS ANALYSIS OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE PLATES USING FLWT-BASED FINITE ELEMENTS

Abstract

The paper deals with the 3-D stress analysis of laminated composite plates using a layerwise displacement model of Reddy, that assumes piece-wise linear variation of all displacement components and the quadratic variation of interlaminar stresses within each layer of the plate. Based on the assumed displacement field, kinematic relations, 3-D constitutive equations of both lamina and laminate and governing equations of motion have been derived. Starting from the strong formulation of the full layerwise theory (FLWT), family of layered finite elements has been developed and implemented in original object-oriented MATLAB code. GiD software is used for the pre- and post-processing. The parametric effects of plate side-to-thickness ratio, mesh refinement in- and out-of-plane and applied element type on total deflection and stress distribution in the considered laminate are shown. The accuracy of the present model is verified against the existing data from the literature and the commercial software. The possibilities for the further improvement and applications of the model are briefly presented.