DEFLECTION CHARACTERISTICS OF CROSS PLY LAMINATES UNDER DIFFERENT LOADING CONDITIONS

Laminated composite plates are nowadays widely used in engineering practice, especially in space, auto mobile and civil applications. Composite plates are one of the most important structural elements that were studied by many researchers in the last 6 or 7 decades. The present study estimates the deflection of cross ply lamina ted composite plates under sinusoidal, uniformly distributed and centre point load. A layerwise model proposed by Savithri is used for this study. Savithri's model considers different displacement function for each layer, which is made possible by incorporating the Heaviside unit step function. The equations are generated using Principle of virtual work.