Non-bifurcation behavior of laminated composite plates under in-plane compression

Abstract

The paper deals with bifurcation and/or non-bifurcation post-buckling curves of composite plates under biaxial compression. For different lay-up sequences, a coupling, i.e. extension-bending (EB) is considered. The current investigations present distinct equilibrium paths describing when they have bifurcation-type and/or non-bifurcation-type responses. The novel parameter (i.e. EB coupling imperfection) is calculated to show the amount of non-bifurcation in the equilibrium path as a quantitative parameter. For the case of non-square plates, a novel mixed-mode analysis is conducted. The effects of different characters in laminated composites such as layer arrangement, loading ratio, aspect ratio, and boundary conditions are investigated. A novel result concluded in the numerical examples where there are some possibilities to have different mode shapes in linear and non-linear buckling analysis. FEM results of ANSYS software verify the results of analytical equations.