Buckling of partially-compressed laminated composite plates

Abstract

The web buckling is one failure mode of web crippling for thin-walled fiber-reinforced plastic (FRP) composite beams subjected to transverse concentrated or distributed compression load from both the top and bottom bearing plates, and the web between the top and bottom flanges can be modeled as a plate with the rotationally-restrained (RR) and partially-compressed loaded edges and the simply-supported (SS) unloaded edges. Explicit solution and universal analytical charts/formulas for buckling analysis of such RRSS composite plates partially compressed along the transverse direction are obtained. The unique Heaviside function and trigonometric series expansion are used to express the partial edge load with effective load length in the governing equilibrium equation. The explicit solution is established for the orthotropic plates subjected to concentrated point compression load in the middle; while the generic buckling analytical curves are developed for infinitely long laminated composite plates transversely compressed partially at the middle of edges as well as near the corners. The accuracy of the present method is validated with available simple analytical solution, numerical finite element method and experimental data. The effect of rotational restraint stiffness, plate aspect ratio, the location and length of partial edge compression load on buckling behavior of laminated composite plates is investigated in the parametric study. A practical guideline for laminated composite plates with the elastic rotational restraints along the loaded edges and partially compressed along the transverse direction is proposed, and it can be further applied in discrete plate analysis to predict the web buckling strength (one failure mode in web crippling) of FRP composite structural shapes under transverse loading at the locations of load bearing or supports.