Buckling Analysis of Thin Laminated Composite Plates using Finite Element Method

Abstract

Finite element method (FEM) is utilized to obtain numerical solution of the governing differential equations. Buckling analysis of rectangular laminated plates with rectangular cross – section for various combinations of boundary conditions and aspect ratios is studied. To verify the accuracy of the present technique, buckling loads are evaluated and validated with other worksavailable in the literature. The good agreement with other available data demonstrates the reliability of finite element method used.New numerical results are generated for uniaxial and biaxial compression loading of symmetrically laminated composite plates; they are focused on the significant effects of buckling for various parameters such as boundary condition, aspect ratio and modular ratio. It was found that the effect of boundary conditions on buckling load increases as the aspect ratio increases for both uniaxial and biaxial compression loading.It was also found that, the variation of buckling load with aspect ratio becomes almost constant for higher values of elastic modulus ratio.