Postbuckling analysis of layered composites using p‐ version finite strips

Abstract

AbstractThis paper presents the results of a study on the buckling and postbuckling analyses of layered shear‐deformable composite plates using p‐version finite strips. The plates are considered to be sufficiently long so that the effect of boundary conditions along the shorter edges is of little significance; this makes it possible to use the ‘exact’ trigonometric functions in the longitudinal direction. The displacement field in the transverse direction is discretized by p‐version finite strips and convergence is studied by p‐extension, i.e. keeping the number of strips relatively small whilst increasing the polynomial order till convergence of the buckling load or the postbuckling stiffness is achieved.Detailed convergence studies are presented and comparison with results of earlier investigations are shown wherever appropriate. The results demonstrate the superior convergence characteristics of the p‐version approach.