Vibration and stability of angle-ply laminated composite plates subjected to in-plane stresses (Q5944855)

A linear model of laminated plate is discussed. The model corresponds to thick plate theory avoiding the independent deformation of individual layers. The deformation field is approximated using power series in vertical coordinate across the layers, and internal stresses and forces are then formulated in an integral form. Therefore the resulting equations of motion and linear buckling can be formulated independently of the number of layers and their orientation. Subsequently, the displacement components with respect to in-plane coordinates are formulated as Fourier series. Unknown coefficients are found from a linear eigenvalue problem combining both dynamic and stability problems. The last paragraph presents some numerical examples for real boundary conditions corresponding to simply supported plates. Some reasoning has been done regarding the convergence of the method and comparison with other theories. However, the problem of convergence is discussed only for simply supported or cantilevered edges.