An investigation of structural composite laminates

The following presentation is divided into two parts, A and B. The ultimate objective of this investigation is to compute the ‘extreme’ loading conditions that will cause failure of one or more of the constituent laminas in a laminate. The failure criterion used here is that of the maximum stress. The ‘extreme’ loading condition is computed by the application of conventional Linear Programming (LP) techniques. This aspect is discussed in Part B. However, in order to form the LP problem it was felt necessary to develop a suitable method of analysis of the laminate under most general loading conditions. Part A gives the aspects of this stand-alone version of a laminate analysis method using matrix notations. The analysis is based on simple Classical Laminate Theory (CLT). The outcomes of this part are the so-called stress and strain coefficient matrices.