Local recovery of through-the-thickness stresses in laminated composite plates

In this paper, an effective procedure is presented for the local recovery of through-the-thickness stresses in laminated composite plates, which incorporates the local refinement using mesh superposition technique and a predictor–corrector post processor for the evaluation of stresses. The stress recovery procedure is based on accurate values of discrete superconvergent stresses and nodal displacements of patch of elements. The mesh superposition technique conveniently provides locally refined mesh for accurate and computationally economical recovery of stresses. To demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach, stresses of several composite plates are evaluated. The composite plates are subjected to thermomechanical loading and either simply supported or clamped boundary conditions.