Analysis of laminated composite and sandwich plate structures using generalized layerwise HSDT and improved meshfree radial point interpolation method

This paper presents a generalized layerwise higher-order shear deformation theory for static, free vibration and buckling analyses of symmetric laminated composite and sandwich plates using improved meshfree radial point interpolation method (iRPIM). The approach comes from a layerwise model combined with a generalized higher-order shear deformation theory. In other words, we impose the continuity on the interface of each layer for the in-plane displacements and transverse shear stresses. This yields more adequate solution for sandwich structures which present the significant difference of properties between the core sheet and the face ones. As a result, transverse shear stresses are accurately achieved as compared with the analytical ones. The present iRPIM shows stability and high accuracy with respect to the uniquely proposed correlation function. A simple but effective enforcement based on the concept of the rotation-free of essential boundary conditions yields significant advantage of computations. The numerical results are provided and compared well with other published solutions.