Isogeometric analysis of laminated composite and sandwich plates using a new inverse trigonometric shear deformation theory

• We propose a new inverse tangent shear deformation theory (ITSDT) for laminated composite-material plates.
• The method does not require any shear correction factors due to using high-order deformation plate theory (HSDT).
• Static, free vibration and buckling plate models based on ITSDT are numerically solved using an isogeometric analysis (IGA).
• Intensive numerical studies have been conducted to show the good performance of the present method.

This paper presents a new inverse tangent shear deformation theory (ITSDT) for the static, free vibration and buckling analysis of laminated composite and sandwich plates. In the present theory, shear stresses are vanished at the top and bottom surfaces of the plates and shear correction factors are no longer required. A weak form of the static, free vibration and buckling models for laminated composite and sandwich plates based on ITSDT is then derived and is numerically solved using an isogeometric analysis (IGA). The proposed formulation requires C1-continuity generalized displacements and hence basis functions used in IGA fulfill this requirement. Numerical examples are provided to show high efficiency of the present method compared with other published solutions.