Semi-analytical Buckling Analysis of Clamped Composite Plates Containing Embedded Rectangular and Circular Delaminations

The buckling behavior of the composite laminate with embedded delaminations is studied in this paper. The analytical method is based on the first order shear deformation theory (FSDT) and its formulation is developed on the basis of the Rayleigh-Ritz approximation technique by the implementation of the simple and complete polynomial series. The method can handle both local buckling of the delaminated sublaminate and global buckling of the whole plate. The three-dimensional finite element analysis is performed by using ANSYS5.4 general purpose commercial software, the results are compared with those obtained by the analytical model, and the agreement between the results is very good.