Global Transverse Shear in Laminated Composite Plates

Abstract

The theory of Reissner for homogeneous isotropic plates is generalized to composite laminates. Based on stress and displacement hypotheses, this extension is intended primarily to establish a global constitutive law including transverse shear effects. To get this law, the mixed functional of Reissner is made stationary with respect to the assumed stress field. The associated primal displacement type formulation is quite similar to the corresponding one of classical plates theories and its numerical implementation through existing finite element codes requires only the change of shear strain-stress laws. Comparison of the proposed theory with the more classical theories issued from the hypotheses of Kirchhoff or Mindlin, is performed on a test problem whose exact analytical solution is available.