The Effect of Boundary Conditions and Stacking Sequence on the Nonlinear Behavior of Laminated Composite Plates in Bending

This paper presents an effectively numerical approach based on quadrilateral isoperimetric element. Indeed, the Von-Karman’s large deflection theory and the first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) are also used in the formulation of the element to formulate the geometrically nonlinearity analysis. The nonlinear finite element code has been developed by using Matlab. Therefore, the governing nonlinear equations obtained are solved using Newton–Raphson iterative technique. Finally, the results obtained are compared with those available in the literature and with those obtained by ABAQUS. It has been found that the present approach is accurate and efficient to predict the nonlinear behavior of laminated composite plates under bending loads. Moreover, the effects of the boundary conditions and the stacking sequence on the nonlinear deflection of the plate are treated.