Effects of hygro-thermo-mechanical loading on composite plate resting on elastic foundation

Abstract

The plate resting on the elastic foundation is an issue of mutual action between two media. The elastic foundation has important impact on static response of composite plates, while accurate prediction on transverse shear stresses of laminated composite plates resting on elastic foundation and subjected to hygro-thermo-mechanical effects is scare in literature. To fill this gap, this paper proposes a higher-order global-local model (HGLM) satisfying the continuity conditions of transverse shear stresses at interfaces. Based on the model HGLM, analytical solution for the governing differential equations of the simply supported composite plate subjected to mechanical loading, temperature and moisture concentrations is developed by employing Navier’s technique followed by the procedure of the separation of variables. Comparing the present results with the available elasticity solutions, it is found that the proposed model HGLM can produce promising transverse shear stresses directly from constitutive equations. Based on the model HGLM, the elastic foundation parameters, stacking sequence and thermal expansion coefficients did have significant effects on the hygro-thermo-elastic response of composite plates. However, the other models lose capacity to simulate the effects of the elastic foundation parameters on displacements and stresses for hygrothermal expansion of composite plates.