Postbuckling analysis of variable angle tow plates using differential quadrature method

Variable angle tow (VAT) placement has been shown to improve the buckling resistance of composite plates under compression loading. The problem of tailoring the in-plane tow path of VAT composite plates for enhanced postbuckling resistance is studied in this work. A pair of coupled geometrically nonlinear governing differential equations in terms of stress function and transverse displacement, based on classical laminated plate theory, is derived for postbuckling analysis of VAT plates. The differential quadrature method (DQM) is applied to solve the differential equations and the resulting nonlinear algebraic equations solved using a Newton–Raphson algorithm. The DQM was applied to study the postbuckling problem of VAT composite plates subjected to axial compression under different plate boundary conditions. The numerical results of DQM are compared with detailed finite element analysis and the relative accuracy and efficiency of the proposed DQM approach is studied.