Buckling Anlysis of Laminated Composite Plates Using Finite Element Method

Laminated composite plate structures find numerous applications in aerospace, military and automotive industries. The role of transverse shear is very important in composites, as the material is weak in shear due to its low shear modulus compared to extensional rigidity. Hence, a true understanding of their structural behavior is required, such as the deflections, buckling loads and modal characteristics, the through thickness distributions of stresses and strains, the large deflection behavior and, of extreme importance for obtaining strong, reliable In this paper, buckling behavior of laminated composite plates under uniaxial and biaxial compression load using commercially available ANSYS software is studied. A number of finite element analyses have been carried out to study the effect of side-to-thickness ratios, aspect ratios, modulus ratios, ply orientation, and boundary conditions on nondimenisonalized critical buckling load for three different materials. The numerical results showed, the effect of shear deformation is to decrease the nondiemnsionalized critical buckling load with the decrease of side to thickness ratio. The ANSYS results are validated with the results predicted by third order shear deformation theory.