Wave propagation in laminated composite plates using higher order theory

A higher order displacement based formulation has been developed to investigate wave propagation in fiber-reinforced polymer composite laminated (FRPCL) plates. The formulation has been applied, as an illustration, to a plate made up of transversely isotropic laminae with the axes of symmetry lying in the plane of the lamina. Results for the plane as well as the antiplane strain cases are shown to be in excellent agreement with the exact solutions for isotropic and transversely isotropic single layered plates. Also, numerical results have been obtained for crossply (0 deg/90 deg/0 deg/90 deg) laminated composite plates, which agree very well with the previously published numerical results. The formulation can be employed to expeditiously investigate the dispersion characteristics of waves propagating in a plate with an arbitrary number of anisotropic laminae.