Stress around square and rectangular cutouts in symmetric laminates

The solution presented in this paper is useful for finding the stress distribution around holes in symmetric laminates as well as in isotropic plates and also to determine the failure strength of the laminate on first ply failure basis by Tsai-Hill, Hashin-Rotem and Tsai-Wu criteria. This is a one stop solution for all kinds of in-plane loading on symmetric laminates as well as isotropic plates with any shape of cutout. Using Savin’s basic solution for anisotropic plates, the stress functions are derived for generalized mapping function for the hole and arbitrarily oriented in-plane loading. Square and rectangular holes in symmetric laminates of Graphite/epoxy and Glass/epoxy are studied. It is noted that the maximum stress and its location is mainly influenced by the type of loading. Larger stresses are noted for shear loading. The stress results are also obtained by ANSYS for comparison.