Shear buckling of rotationally-restrained composite laminated plates

• A semi-analytical solution for shear buckling of restrained laminated plates by the Galerkin method is proposed.
• The deformation shape function is constructed with a unique weighting combination of eigenfunctions.
• The effects of the rotational restraint stiffness, aspect ratio, material orthotropy and anisotropy are studied.

Based on the Galerkin method, a semi-analytical solution for the shear buckling of composite laminated plates with all four edges elastically-restrained against rotation is presented. The considered laminated plates are loaded in pure shear or combined shear and compression. The deformation shape function is constructed through a unique weighting combination of vibration eigenfunctions of simply-supported and clamped conditions, and it is an effective method for solving the considered eigenvalue problem. A parametric study is conducted to evaluate the effect of the rotational restraint stiffness, plate aspect ratio, material orthotropy and anisotropy on the buckling behavior of the rotationally-restrained laminated plates under pure shear or combined shear and compression action. The semi-analytical solution presented can be used to analyze the restrained laminated plates under shear-dominated loading and applied to predict the web local buckling of thin-walled composite beams.