A RELATION BETWEEN LAMINATION PARAMETERS OF STIFFEST POST-BUCKLED COMPOSITE PLATE

Abstract

The present paper deals with the anisotropic composite plates experiencing postbuckling. The plates have a symmetric lay-up and obey the geometrically non-linear von Karman law. A point-wise relation between the lamination parameters of the stiffest composite plates in postbuckling is derived and analyzed. It is shown that in the considered case not all lamination parameters are independent on each other (one of them is a linearly dependent one). The remaining linearly independent seven components of the lamination parameter vector are some non-linear functions of six parameters describing point-wisely the 2D principal strains and the principal curvatures. The analysis leads to a conclusion that the optimization w.r.t. the lamination parameters only is not sufficient for obtaining an optimal plate lay-up.