STATIC AND STABILITY ANALYSIS OF COMPOSITE PLATES BY A SEMIANALYTICALMETHOD

An anisotropic plate element suitable for static and stability analysi s of thin composite laminates is presented. The element is formulated on the basis of the transfer matrix method (TMM). The suitability of t he element is evaluated by its application on certain anisotropic plat es. Numerical results presented in this paper are in excellent agreeme nt with results obtained from analytical and finite element (FE) solut ions. The main advantage of the proposed element is the semi-analytica l formulation which is reflected in the accuracy of the results and th e reduction of the number of degrees of freedom required in the analys is, compared to the FE numerical method.