ANALYSIS OF A SIMPLY SUPPORTED PLATE WITH SYMMETRICAL ANGLE-PLY LAMINATIONS

A new analytical solution to a moderately thick simply supported recta ngular plate with symmetric angle-ply laminations is presented. The pl ate is subjected to a uniformly distributed transverse load. The Resis sner-Mindlin theory that incorporates transverse shear deformations in to plate formulations characterizing the moderately thick behavior is considered. The plate deformation behavior for bending is defined by t hree highly coupled second-order partial differential equations in thr ee unknowns. These equations, in conjunction with the admissible bound ary conditions, are solved using a powerful numerical tool: a displace ment-based double Fourier series approach. Two sets of solution functi ons are selected, where one set shows a complete continuity at the bou ndaries, while the other set fails to do so. The numerical results tha t study convergence of transverse displacement and moments, and variat ions of them for various parametric effects, should serve as baseline solutions for future comparisons of such popular approximate numerical techniques as the finite element and finite difference methods, as we ll as experimental results.