Parametric instability of twisted cross-ply laminated panels

The present paper deals with the study of the vibration, buckling and parametric instability characteristics of general laminated cross-ply pre-twisted cantilever flat and curved panels. The effects of angles of pre-twist, aspect ratio, static load factor, and the lamination parameters of the cross-ply twisted curved panels on the principal instability regions are studied using Bolotinʼs approach. An eight-noded isoparametric quadratic shell element with five degrees of freedom per node is used to develop the finite element procedure. The first order shear deformation theory is used to model the twisted cross-ply curved panels considering the effects of transverse shear deformation and rotary inertia. The linear part of the strain is used to derive the elastic stiffness matrix and the non-linear part of the strain is used to derive the geometric stiffness matrix. The global matrices are obtained by assembling the corresponding element matrices using skyline technique. Subspace iteration method is used throughout to solve the eigenvalue problem. Reduced integration technique is adopted in order to avoid possible shear locking. Based on the parametric studies, it is found that the instability behavior of twisted cross-ply cantilever panels is greatly influenced by the geometry, material, angle of twist and lamination parameters. So, this can be used to advantage in tailoring during design of crossply twisted cantilever panels.