Postbuckling of shear deformable laminated plates resting on a tensionless elastic foundation subjected to mechanical or thermal loading

Postbuckling responses of shear deformable laminated plates supported by a tensionless elastic foundation and subjected to in-plane compressive edge loads or a uniform temperature rise are investigated. The formulations are based on the higher order shear deformation plate theory with a von Kármán-type of kinematic non-linearity and include the plate-foundation interaction, for which the foundation reacts in compression only. The thermal effects are also included and the material properties are assumed to be independent of temperature. The initial geometric imperfection of the plate is taken into account. The analysis uses a two step perturbation technique to determine the postbuckling response of the plate. An iterative scheme is developed to obtain numerical results without using any prior assumption for the shape of the contact region. The numerical illustrations concern the postbuckling behavior of antisymmetric angle-ply and symmetric cross-ply laminated plates resting on tensionless elastic foundations of the Pasternak-type, from which results for conventional elastic foundations are obtained as comparators. The results reveal that the unilateral constraint has a significant effect on the postbuckling response of the plate subjected to either mechanical or thermal loading when the foundation stiffness is sufficiently large. © 2004 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.