THE BUCKLING OF COMPOSITE STIFFENED PLATES WITH SOME EMPHASIS ON THE EFFECTS OF FIBER ORIENTATION AND ON LOADING CONFIGURATION

The bucking characteristics of some composite stiffened plates are determined in this paper using a finite strip approach. The finite strip formulation is able to predict the complex buckling modes associated with in-plane shear loading and the method of approach can allow for other loading configurations whose associated pre-buckling stresses are not so obviously realised. Two loading conditions have essentially been considered in the paper, that of in-plane shear and that of partial edge loads being reacted by shear. The strip displacement fields before and after buckling are represented by algebraic polynomials across the strip and trigonometric functions along the strip length. The inclusion of sufficient harmonics in the appropriate displacement representations thus allows the distorted nodal lines of the shear buckling mode and the complex pre-buckled stresses associated with partial edge loads to be determined with relative ease.