Effect of flexure-extension coupling on the elastic instability of a composite laminate plate

The present study focuses on the effect of extension-bending coupling on the elastic stability (buckling) of laminated composite plates. These plates will be loaded under uni-axial or bi-axial in-plane mechanical loads, especially in the orthotropic or anti-symmetric cross-angle cases. The main objective is to find a limit where we can approximate the elastic stability behavior of angularly crossed anti-symmetric plates by the simple behavior of specially orthotropic plates. The contribution of my present study is to predict the explicit effect of extension-flexion coupling on the elastic stability of this type of panel. Critically, a parametric study is carried out, involving the search for the critical buckling load as a function of deformation mode, aspect ratio, plate anisotropy ratio and finally the study of the effect of lamination angle and number of layers on the contribution of extension-flexure coupling in terms of plate buckling stability. We use first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) with a correction factor of 5/6. Simply supported conditions along the four boundaries are adopted where we can develop closed-form analytical solutions obtained by a Navier development.