BUCKLING OF LAMINATED PLATES CONTAINING DELAMINATIONS

The stability behaviour of fibre reinforced plastic plates containing delaminations is studied. Embedded delaminations in the form of a circle or an ellipse, centrally located in [0/90(2)/0] square plates are considered. A 36 degrees of freedom triangular finite element based on classical laminated plate theory is utilized to idealize the two sublaminates in the delaminated and the undelaminated part of the laminate. Results are compared with some of those available in the literature. Effects of size, shape, thickness-wise location of delamination and fibre orientation on the buckling load are discussed. Generally, the buckling load reduces with increase in delamination size and three distinct types of buckling modes are possible depending upon the delamination parameters.