Abstract
Because of their high specific strength and stiffness, fiber-reinforced plastics have used as structural members in various fields, and hence analysis of thin laminated structures is important. The postbuckling behaviors of thin laminated curved plates under uniaxial compressive loads have been discussed by many researchers. However, they become unstable with further loading and the secondary buckling which occurs accompanying snapping-through to higher-order deflection pattern has not yet been clarified. In this paper, cross-ply laminated curved plates under biaxial compressive loads which are simply supported along four edges is considered as an example. By a proposed method based on the second variation of total potential energy to judge the stability of postbuckling equilibrium state, the inevitability of secondary buckling is proved analytically and the effects of various factors on the secondary buckling values are clarified.
