Dynamic buckling of thin-walled composite plates with varying widthwise material properties

The paper deals with dynamic response of a thin-walled rectangular plate subjected to in-plane pulse loading. The plate is made of orthotropic (fibre composite) material in which the principal directions of orthotropy are parallel to the plate edges. The plate is characterised by a widthwise varying fibre volume fraction. The structures are assumed to be simply supported at the loaded ends and at non-loaded ends with five different boundary conditions (both simply supported, both fixed, simply supported fixed, simply supported free edge, fixed free edge). In order to obtain the equations of motion the non-linear theory of orthotropic thin-walled plates has been modified in such a way that it additionally accounts for all components of inertial forces. The differential equations of motion have been obtained from Hamilton’s Principle. The problem of nonlinear static stability was solved with the second order of the Koiter’s asymptotic stability theory of conservative systems. The results obtained from analytical–numerical method were compared with the results from finite element method (FEM).