COMPRESSIVE BEHAVIOR OF MODERATELY THICK PLATES WITH PROGRESSIVE DAMAGE

An analytical methodology is presented to study the compressive behavi or of moderately thick laminated plates under uniaxial compressive loa ds. Nonlinear in-plane stress-strain relations for transverse and shea r modulus are considered and two failure criteria are incorporated to represent the progressive damage of Composite plate structures. The fi nite-element analysis package, ABAQUS, with an updated Lagrangian form ulation and large displacement and small strain kinematic relations, i s employed in this study. Numerical analyses are conducted to demonstr ate the effect of material nonlinearity, thickness-to-length ratio, an d stacking sequence on the compressive behavior Comparisons between th e maximum-strain failure criterion and Hashin's failure criterion are presented.