An experimental study on laminated panels in compression

The theoretical approach adopted in this paper is applied to the buckling and post-buckling behaviour of laminated plates subjected to unidirectional in-plane loading. Full details of the theoretical approach are given in a companion paper ( Comp. Struct., 19 (1991) 41–65). The membrane boundary conditions considered were those which allowed the unloaded edges to wave in the plane of the plate. The flexural boundary conditions considered were simple supports on the loaded ends with the unloaded edges rotationally restrained, thus giving the theoretical approach more flexibility in allowing the unloaded edges to be simply supported and clamped as the limiting cases. An extensive complementary experimental investigation was carried out to confirm the theoretical findings. The test set-up gave simply supported boundary conditions on the unloaded edges and fully fixed conditions on the loaded ends. Large deflection results and post-buckling strain distributions were obtained for laminated panels composed of 14 layers of Grafil XAS/914C Fibredux, and comparisons are made with the theory.