A meshfree method for static and buckling analysis of shear deformable composite laminates considering continuity of interlaminar transverse shearing stresses

Abstract

A meshfree radial point interpolation method is presented for static and buckling analysis of thick laminated plates, taking into account the continuity of interlaminar transverse shearing stresses and zigzag variation of the displacement field through the plate’s thickness. The kinematics of the deformation field is based on the refined theory of Wang and Shi (2015). The corresponding weak-form for static bending and buckling analyses of plates based on the Wang and Shi’s theory are derived through minimum potential energy principle. The discretized systems of equations for static bending and buckling analyses are derived and the associated numerical integration is performed by the novel CTM quadrature. This integration method can exactly model the problem geometry and thus is very fast and accurate. Several numerical examples are solved to demonstrate the accuracy and efficiency of the plate theory adopted in this paper. Additionally, the examples are also analyzed using the FSDT, TSDT and Shi’s plate theory (2007). Because the four theories considered in this paper use five field variables and they also have some other similarities, the influence of higher order terms of the displacement field, transverse shearing strain energy consistency, and imposition of transverse shearing stress continuity on results is investigated.