Thermo-mechanical bending of laminated composite and sandwich plates using layerwise displacement model

The objective of this paper is thermo-mechanical bending of laminated composite and sandwich plates subjected to mechanical load and linearly varying through the thickness temperature field. Mathematical model, based on layer-wise displacement field of Reddy, is formulated using small deflection linear-elasticity theory. The principle of virtual displacements (PVD) is used to obtain the strong and the weak form of the mathematical model. The weak form is discretized using the isoparametric finite element approximation, while the analytical solution is derived from the strong form. The originally coded MATLAB program is used to investigate the influence of plate geometry and degree of material orthotropy on thermo-mechanical response of laminate composite and sandwich plates. The accuracy of the numerical model is verified by comparison with the available results from the literature and some new results are presented.