Buckling behaviour of laminated composite plates under thermal loading

A thermal buckling analysis of composite laminated plate is studied using the ABAQUS/Standard Finite Element simulation package. The effects of transverse shear deformation are accounted for by the use of the Mindlin first-order shear deformation (FSDT) theory on a plate of rectangular construction. The plate has antisymmetric lamination with respect to the middle plane. The intermediate class of deformation is employed for this non-linear analysis. The first variation of the total potential energy establishes the equilibrium equation and the second variation analyses the stability of the laminated composite. A displacement-based finite element with five degrees of freedom in each node is used. The effects of lamination angle, modulus ratio, plate aspect ratio, plate thickness ratio the and boundary constrains upon the critical buckling temperature are investigated and found to have a significant effect on the critical buckling temperature, especially the number of layers.