Interlaminar shear stresses around an internal part-through hole in a laminated composite plate

The equilibrium/compatibility method, which is a semi-analytical post-processing method, is employed for computation of hitherto unavailable through-thickness variation of interlaminar (transverse) shear stresses in the vicinity of the bi-layer interface circumferential re-entrant corner line of an internal part-through circular cylindrical hole weakening an edge-loaded laminated composite plate. A CoCo-type triangular composite plate element, based on the assumptions of transverse inextensibility and layer-wise constant shear-angle theory (LCST), is utilized to first compute the in-plane stresses and layer-wise through-thickness average interlaminar shear stresses, which serve as the starting point for computation of through-thickness distribution of interlaminar shear stresses in the vicinity of the bi-layer interface circumferential re-entrant corner line of the part-through hole. The same stresses computed by the conventional equilibrium method (EM) are, in contrast, in serious error in the presence of the bi-layer interface circumferential re-entrant corner line singularity arising out of the internal part-through hole, and are found to violate the interfacial compatibility condition. The computed interlaminar shear stress can vary from negative to positive through the thickness of a cross-ply plate in the neighborhood of this kind of stress singularity.