THERMAL BUCKLING OF CROSS-PLY COMPOSITE LAMINATES

Thermal buckling of antisymmetric cross-ply composite laminates is investigated in this paper. A one-dimensional finite element having two nodes and six degrees of freedom, namely axial displacement, transverse displacement, rotation of the normal to the beam axis and their derivatives with respect to the beam coordinate axis at each node, is developed based on the first-order shear deformation theory. The element elastic stiffness matrix and the geometric stiffness matrix (based on thermal stresses) each of order 12 x 12 are derived to compute the bifurcation thermal load (critical temperature). Correspondence of thermal critical load parameter and mechanical critical load parameter in the case of isotropic and composite laminates is discussed. Results are presented for various boundary conditions, lay-up sequences and slenderness ratios.