The Effects of Circular Cutout on Buckling Analysis of Laminated Composite Plates Using FEM

Abstract

All work done in this paper covers the analysis on the plate scale, which will be a reference to the composite radome shell. This study presents the effects of a cutout on the buckling behavior of symmetric cross-ply (0,90)s and symmetric angle-ply (45,- 45)s types laminated composite square plates using Finite Element Method (FEM) based on Equivalent Single-Layer Theory (ESLT). These special orthotropic laminated composite plates were examined under the uniaxial compressive loading using Composite Materials Module of COMSOL Multiphysics Software. Structural analyses were performed in order to predict the effects of a circular cutout size, location of cutout, plate thickness (t), aspect ratio (proportion of hole diameter-(d) to edge length-(b) of plate), and various boundary conditions (simply supported and clamped). Convergence study has been carried out by comparing the results obtained from the numerical results of previous work available in the literature. Some general results have been obtained depending on the variables examined. In the buckling load results of three different mesh sizes, it was seen that the critical buckling load converged more as the mesh size decreased. We found that the plates which were simply supported against the reduction in the critical buckling load on the square plates containing cutouts were more sensitive than the clamped plates. In cases where the cutout diameter was constant, it was seen that the increase in the edge length of the square plate caused a decrease in the buckling load.