Similitude invariants and scaling laws for buckling experiments on anti-symmetrically laminated plates subjected to biaxial loading

Establishing the similitude between the model and prototype rigorously is a necessary step in designing an experiment efficiently. So far, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, no one has ever derived the similitude invariant for anti-symmetric cross- and angle-ply laminated plates subjected to biaxial loading before. This research paper is the first to establish the similitude invariant of anti-symmetric cross- and angle-ply laminated plates by applying the similitude transformation to the governing differential equations of buckling directly. Then the scaling laws for buckling loads of laminated plates subjected to biaxial loads are derived. But in reality, either due to the complexity of the scaling laws or to economize on costly experiments, it may not be feasible to construct the model conforming to the scaling laws completely, therefore partial similitude is investigated theoretically and approximate scaling laws are recommended. The buckling loads of the prototype predicted from the scaling laws are then compared with the available theoretical values. The complete similitude cases show exact agreement between results predicted from the scaling laws and the available analytical solutions. For partial similitude cases, the models distorted in stacking sequences, number of plies, and material properties are studied and the approximate scaling laws which yield good agreement are recommended.