Bending Behaviour of Thick Composite Plates Subjected to Mechanical and Hygrothermal Loading

摘要

This paper deals with hygrothermomechanical behaviour of bending thick rectangular simply supported composite plates under mechanical and hygrothermal loads. The analysis uses the Finite Element (FE) method and based on the full third-order plate bending theory, in which both in-plane and out-of-plane displacement components are assumed to have cubic variations througth the thickness of the plate. The practical moisture concentration functions m (z, t) is applied to compute the hygroscopic generalized resultants. The numerical examples are presented for symmetrically on-axis, (00/900/900/00) and off-axis, (450/-450/-450/450) graphite-epoxy laminated plates. The results show that the hygrothermal environment causes the increases in 1, 2 and 3 in all layers of the plate and has significant influence on the limit loads, which were calculated by Tsai-Wu criterion.