A METHOD OF SOLVING THREE-DIMENSIONAL PROBLEMS OF ELASTICITY FOR LAMINATED COMPOSITE PLATES

An efficient method of solving 3D elasticity problems for thick and thin laminated composite plates is presented. It is based on a new concept of reference surfaces inside the plate. According to this concept, into each nth layer, I-n arbitrary reference surfaces parallel to the midsurface are introduced, and the displacement vectors of these surfaces are chosen as unknown functions. Such a choice allows one to represent the governing equations of the high-order theory of plates proposed in a very compact form and to derive strain-displacement relationships correctly describing all rigid-body motions of laminated plates.