ANALYSIS OF LAMINATED COMPOSITE PLATE USING SIMPLE HIGHER ORDER THEORY

Abstract

Laminated composites are broadly used in versatile engineering sectors like aviation, civil, marine, automobile and other high performance structures due to their possessing high strength, high stiffness, good shear properties, lower density and corrosion resistance (durability) and many other superior characteristics compared to the traditional materials. In spite of the fact that the classical plate theory is very simple and elegant but it can be hardly of any more applicable in finite element analysis specifically when thick plates are of concern due to the effect of transverse shear strains. Above that delamination acts as an alarming insidious failure causing the layers of a laminated composite plate to segregate without being seen from outside. This study focuses to analyse mathematically the static response of laminated composite structure without delamination by developing numerical models in MATLAB framework based on the higher order shear deformation theory in synchrony with finite element method. With parallel to that, a simulation model was also developed using finite element software, ANSYS 15.0 and was primarily utilized for the analysis purpose. Finally the results obtained from the analysis of laminated composites using an elegant C0 isoparametric Lagrangian element having nine DOFs per node in FEM through MATLAB forum is corroborated with that obtained from the commercial software by varying different parameters, such as aspect ratio, thickness ratio, boundary conditions, loading condition, emphasizing the viability and the appropriateness of the presently developed higher order models.