Thermal Buckling Analysis of Laminated Composite plates with General Elastic Boundary Supports

Abstract

In this study, the modified Rayleigh-Ritz method and Fourier series are used to determine the thermal buckling behavior of laminated composite thin plates with a general elastic boundary condition applied to in-plane uniform temperature distribution depending upon classical laminated plate theory(CLPT). A generalized procedure solution is developed for the Rayleigh-Ritz method combined with the synthetic spring technique. The transverse displacement of the orthotropic rectangular plates is not a different term as a new shape expansion of trigonometric series. In this solution approach, the plate transverse deflection and rotation due to bending are developed into principle Fourier series with a sufficient smoothness auxiliary polynomial function, the variable of boundary condition can be easily done by only change the boundary spring stiffness of at the all boundaries of laminated composite plate without achieving any replacement to the solution. The accuracy of the current outcome is verified by comparing with the result obtained from other analytical methods in addition to the finite element method (FEM), so the excellent of this technique is proving during numerical examples.