Stability behaviour of arbitrarily laminated composite plates with free and elastically restrained unloaded edges

In this paper, the initial buckling loads and the corresponding buckling modes of symmetric rectangular laminated plates are investigated. The considered laminates are supposed to have a uniform thickness, are subjected to a linearly distributed inplane compressive normal load N 11 0 and are simply supported at the two loaded edges with one free unloaded plate edge and with one simply supported unloaded edge where elastic rotational restraints are considered. Unlike in many other investigations, the composite laminates presently under consideration may have arbitrary yet symmetric lamination schemes with bending–torsion coupling. The initial buckling loads of such plates are calculated using the RITZ-method for which some especially adjusted displacement shape functions are employed. Since a series expansion of the buckling shape is performed in the load direction only while in the perpendicular direction one single displacement function can be shown to be sufficient, the present approach is numerically very efficient when compared to approaches in which a series representation is chosen with respect to both inplane directions. Comparison with reference results and with finite element computations leads to an excellent agreement. Some new findings on the general stability behaviour of this class of laminated plates are presented as a closure.