A linear smoothed quadratic finite element for buckling analysis of laminated composite plates

Abstract

In this paper, a linear smoothing scheme over eight-node Reissner-Mindlin plate element under the framework of the CS-FEM is employed to buckling analysis of laminated composite plates based on the first-order shear deformation theory. The modified stain matrix is computed by the divergence theorem between the nodal shape functions and their derivatives using Taylor's expansion. Isoparametric mapping and the computation of interior derivatives of shape function is not required in the proposed method, furthermore, all the computation are based on the global Cartesian coordinates. Some numerical examples are given at the end to demonstrate that the present method has good performance to alleviate the shear-locking phenomenon and improve the quality of the solutions with distorted meshes.