Buckling delamination of a rectangular plate containing a rectangular crack and made from elastic and viscoelastic composite materials

This paper studies a three-dimensional buckling delamination problem for a rectangular plate made from elastic and viscoelastic composite material. It is assumed that the plate contains a rectangular band-crack (Case 1) and a rectangular edge-crack (Case 2) and that the edge-surfaces of these cracks have an initial infinitesimal imperfection. The evolution of this initial imperfection with an external compressive loading, acting along the crack (for an elastic composite) or with duration of time (for a viscoelastic composite under fixed external loading) is investigated within the framework of three-dimensional geometrically non-linear field equations of the theory of the viscoelasticity for anisotropic bodies. To determine the values of the critical force or critical time as well as the buckling delamination mode, the initial imperfection criterion is used. The corresponding boundary-value problems are solved by employing boundary form perturbation techniques, Laplace transform and FEM (Finite Element Method). The influence of the materials and/or the geometrical parameters of the plate on the critical values are discussed. In particular, it is established that for the considered change range of the problem parameters, the buckling form depends only on the initial infinitesimal imperfection mode of the crack edges. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.