Buckling of laminated sandwich plates using an efficient plate model

Buckling of laminated sandwich plates is studied using an efficient finite element plate model recently developed by the authors. The plate model is based on a refined higher order shear deformation theory, where the transverse shear stresses are continuous at the layer interfaces with stress free conditions at plate top and bottom. It is interesting to note that the plate model having all these refined features requires unknowns at the reference plane only. However, this theory requires C¹ continuity of the transverse displacement, which is difficult to satisfy arbitrarily in any existing finite element. To deal with this, a new triangular element developed by the authors is used in the present paper.