Design of composite laminated plates for maximum buckling load with stiffness and elastic modulus constraints

Buckling strength is the most important design criterion for laminated composite structures subjected to compressive loading. The aim of the present work is to introduce an explicit procedure in designing laminated composite plates for maximum buckling load subjected to strength and stiffness constraints using the polar formalism, which relates stiffness to the critical buckling load in order to simplify the calculation and optimization of the buckling load. The polar representation of plane elasticity is effectively used in this work in order to introduce a unified optimization method. Design for maximum flexural stiffness as well as laminate effective elastic modulus was developed in order to achieve the optimal orientation of the layers giving the maximum buckling strength. Three optimization procedures were proposed. The first one is unconstrained optimization and the two other cases are constrained optimization subjected to the flexural stiffness and the elastic modulus constraints. The quasi-homogeneous laminates, which have been used as a special class of laminate stacks, were proposed as the general solution for the optimal stacking sequence of the layers.