A NEW LOCAL HIGH-ORDER LAMINATE THEORY

A new local high-order deformable theory of laminated composite/sandwich plates is presented here. The displacement fields of each discrete layer were assumed in the present theory to be of a high-order polynomial series through layer-thickness. The displacement and traction continuity conditions at the interface between layers and the traction conditions at the outer surfaces were imposed as the constraint conditions, and introduced into the potential energy functional by the Lagrange multiplier method. The equations of motion and admissible boundary conditions were given on the basis of the present theory by using the generalized variational principle. Pagano's 3-D elasticity solutions of generally rectangular laminated composite/sandwich plates, fully simply supported, subjected to transverse sinusoidal loading were used for assessment of the present theory and other theories discussed in previous literature. The present theory was found to agree very closely with 3-D elasticity solutions.