Buckling of laminated plates with general boundary conditions under combined compression, tension, and shear—A semi-analytical solution

A semi-analytical approach to the buckling analysis of generally supported laminated plates subjected to a general combination of inplane shear, compression, and tension loads is presented. Arbitrary out of plane and inplane boundary conditions at the edges of the plate are considered. The formulation is based on the variational principle of virtual work and the multi-term extended Kantorovich method. The semi-analytical method is used for the pre-buckling and buckling (stability) analyses of laminated rectangular plates with inplane restraints under arbitrary inplane loads. The accuracy and convergence are examined through a comparison with exact solutions (where available) and with finite element analyses. The applicability of the method is demonstrated through various numerical examples that focus on the buckling of rectangular composite plates with a variety of boundary conditions and various combinations of the inplane shear, compressive, and tensile loads.