COUPLED THERMOELASTIC THEORY FOR DYNAMIC STABILITY OF COMPOSITE PLATES

The equations governing the thermal dynamic stability of symmetrically laminated (or homogeneous) orthotropic rectangular plates are present ed including full thermoelastic coupling. A solution is developed for a thermally oscillating load having the form A - 2B cos tau using an e xtension of Bolotin's dynamic stability theory. It is found that resul ts cart be compactly parametrized in terms of a thermal coupling numbe r delta, that is the ratio of the product of displacement-thermal fiel d coupling parameters to the thermal loading frequency, and a second p arameter, delta/K-2, that contains information on the material and geo metric properties of the materials comprising the plate. It is found t hat for practically achievable values of these parameters the stabilit y regions can be quite different from those obtained using uncoupled t heory.