Effect of interfacial imperfection on bending behavior of composites and sandwich laminates by an efficient C0 FE model

•Imperfections at layer interfaces are efficiently modeled using a linear spring layer model.•Simple post processing technique to calculate the transverse stresses efficiently.•Low cost theory is adopted to avoid the integration of the equilibrium equations.•C1 continuity is not required in FEM formulation for plate element.

The bending behavior of composites and sandwich plates having imperfections at the layer interfaces is investigated by a refined higher order shear deformation plate theory (RHSDT) and a Least Square Error (LSE) method. In this theory, the in-plane displacement field is obtained by superposing a globally varying cubic displacement field on a zig-zag linearly varying displacement field. This plate theory represents parabolic through thickness variation of transverse shear stresses which satisfy the inter-laminar continuity condition at the layer interfaces and zero transverse shear stress condition at the top and bottom of the plate. In this plate model, the interfacial imperfection is represented by a liner spring-layer model. Finite element method is adopted and an efficient C0 continuous 2D finite element (FE) model is developed based on the above mentioned plate theory for the static analysis of composites and sandwich laminates having imperfections at the layer interfaces. In this model, the first derivatives of transverse displacement have been treated as independent variables to circumvent the problem of C1 continuity associated with the above plate theory (RHSDT). The LSE method is applied to the 3D equilibrium equations of the plate problem at the post-processing stage, after in-plane stresses are calculated by using the above FE model based on RHSDT. The proposed model is implemented to analyze the laminated composites and sandwich plates having interfacial imperfection. Many new results are also presented which should be useful for the future research.