A study on thermal postbuckling behaviour of laminated composite plates using a shear-flexible finite element

This paper deals with a nonlinear finite element formulation for studying the postbuckling behaviour of laminated plates induced by a uniform/nonuniform temperature field. The thermal stress analysis is carried out for the nonuniformly distributed temperature loading over the plate before solving the buckling problem. The formulation is based on the Reissner-Mindlin first order shear deformation theory. The nonlinearity due to moderately large deformation of the plate is included in the formulation. Deflection-load relationships are obtained through an iterative method. An element based on C degrees continuity developed recently is used to investigate the postbuckling/secondary instability behaviour of the laminates. Detailed numerical results based on various parameters are presented for cross-ply and angle-ply laminated composite plates with different boundary conditions. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.