Static, vibration and buckling analysis of skew composite and sandwich plates under thermo mechanical loading

Static, vibration and buckling behavior of laminated composite and sandwich skew plates is studied using an efficient C0 FE model developed based on refined higher order zigzag theory. The C0 FE model satisfies the interlaminar shear stress continuity at the interfaces and zero transverse shear stress conditions at plate top and bottom. In this model, the first derivatives of transverse displacement have been treated as independent variables to overcome the problem of C1 continuity associated with the plate theory. The C0 continuity of the present element is compensated in the stiffness matrix formulation by adding a suitable term. In order to avoid stress oscillations observed in the displacement based finite element, the stress field derived from temperature is made consistent with the total strain field by using field consistent approach. Numerical results are presented for different static, vibration and buckling problems by applying the FE model under thermo mechanical loading, where a nine noded C0 continuous isoparametric element is used. It is observed that there are very few results available in the literature on laminated composite and sandwich skew plates based on refined theories. As such many new results are also generated for future reference.