A model for thick laminates and sandwich plates

A model well adapted for the calculation of thick laminates submitted to important shear effects is proposed. The model belongs to the family of equivalent single-layer plate models. It is dedicated to the prediction of the laminate's overall deformation. In this model, the in-plane components of the 3D strain field are assumed to be linear in the thickness direction. The 3D stress field is in exact equilibrium with the prescribed forces (except near the free boundaries). The 3D stress and 3D strain are related by the 3D constitutive law in the framework of linear elasticity. It is shown that the resolution of this 3D approached model can be performed iteratively by solving at each step a Reissner-Mindlin pre-stressed plate problem. The model has been implemented using ABAQUS finite element code. Its accuracy is demonstrated on a large number of examples. (C) 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.