VISCOELASTIC ANALYSIS OF VON KARMAN LAMINATED PLATES UNDER INPLANE COMPRESSION WITH INITIAL DEFLECTION

The creep responses of simply-supported cross-ply and angle-ply viscoe lastic laminates, having various magnitudes of imperfections, under in -plane compression are examined. The nonlinear strain-displacement rel ation is based on the von Karman assumption. The stress function is ob tained by solving the compatibility equation by the use of the Laplace transform, and the deflection is calculated from the moment equation by the Galerkin method and a numerical integration scheme. The numeric al results of deflection history and edge shortening for the glass/epo xy laminates are presented for illustrating the effect of imperfection s and viscoelastic properties on the creep behavior. The solutions bas ed on the quasi-elastic approach are also presented for comparison. (C ) 1997 Elsevier Science Ltd.