Buckling behaviour of composite laminates of trapezoidal panel with cutout subjected to non-uniform in-plane edge loads

Abstract

Abstract Critical buckling loads of composite laminates are usually calculated by using analytical solutions based on the assumptions of uniform in-plane loads, despite of the fact that real structures are often subjected to various nonuniform loads. The present work is focused on the buckling behavior of composite trapezoidal laminates panel with cutouts, subjected to various nonuniform in-plane loads. The effect of variation is size of trapezoidal plate on the buckling behavior has been studied using finite element method. The governing differential eigenvalue equations have been solved using subspace algorithm. The analytical solution for such problems is very difficult. Hence in this work, a finite element software FORTRAN is used to study the buckling behavior of thin and thick laminated panels with cutouts subjected to various kinds of non-uniform edge loads. The panel is modeled by using eight node elements with five degrees of freedom at each node. The accuracy of the model is confirmed by comparing present results with available literature. The effect of various parameters such as cutout size, boundary conditions and ply-orientations of panel are included in this work. It is observed from this study that the non-uniform edge loads and cutout size has remarkable effect on the buckling behavior of said panels.