The effect of rotatory inertia on the dynamic response of laminated composite plate

The strip element method (SEM) is extended to include rotatory inertia for analysing the dynamic response of laminated composite plates. The transient responses of rectangular symmetric laminated plates are computed for various loading using the newly developed SEM program. The effect of the rotatory inertia is investigated for plates of different thickness. It is found that the rotatory inertia has less effect on thin plates whose thickness-length ratio is less than 1/20, but significant effect on thicker plates. The effects of other parameters such as elastic constants, material density and fiber orientation on the responses of plate are also studied and discussed in detail. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.