Buckling Analysis of Symmetrically Laminated Rectangular Thin Plates under Biaxial Compression

Abstract

In this parametric study, the buckling analysis of symmetrically laminated rectangular thin plates subjected to biaxial compression is presented. The simply supported boundary condition is considered at the edges of the symmetrically laminated quasi-isotropic, cross-ply and angle-ply plates. The Rayleigh-Ritz Method is used to specify the critical buckling load of the plates based on the Classical Laminated Plate Theory (CLPT). A convergence study is achieved by increasing the number of parameters of assumed shape function. Validation of isotropic case is verified. The effects of the lamination types, plate aspect ratios (a/b, b/a) and thickness on the critical buckling load of the laminated plates under bi-axial compression were then investigated. The results were compared with Finite Element Method (FEM) solutions performed by ANSYS software package and fairly good agreement is obtained. Non-dimensional results were tabulated and presented for practical use for designers.