Static analysis of thick rectangular laminated plates: three-dimensional elasticity solutions via differential quadrature element method

This article presents the first endeavor to develop the differential quadra ture element method for static solution of three-dimensional elasticity equ ations of thick rectangular laminated composite plates. The domain decompos ition technique is employed to decompose a laminated plate into elements ac cording to material layers. The differential quadrature (DQ) method is then applied to each element where the material properties are continuous to fo rm the element weighting coefficient matrix and element force vector. The d iscretized element weighting coefficient matrices and element force vectors are assembled together to form the global weighting coefficient matrix and global force vector for the whole plate using connection conditions. The s olution for the entire plate is obtained by solving the final algebraic equ ation system. Detailed formulations and numerical procedures are presented and the convergence characteristics of the method are investigated. The num erical results are then compared, where possible, with the analytical solut ions to verify the present solutions. Consequently, some new numerical resu lts are computed and analyzed using the present numerical method for lamina ted rectangular plates with different boundary conditions, which are not so lvable directly by the global DQ method. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.