Explicit solutions for the modeling of laminated composite plates with arbitrary stacking sequences

In this paper, a method to compute explicit solutions for laminated plate with arbitrary stacking sequences is presented. This technique is based on the construction of an a posteriori Reduced-Order Model using the so-called Proper Generalized Decomposition. The displacement field is approximated as a sum of separated functions of the in-plane coordinates x,y, the transverse coordinate z   and the orientation of each ply θiθi. This choice yields to an iterative process that consists of solving a 2D and some 1D problems successively at each iteration. In the thickness direction, a fourth-order expansion in each layer is considered. For the in-plane description, classical Finite Element method is used. The functions of θiθi are discretized with linear interpolations. Mechanical tests with different numbers of layers are performed to show the accuracy of the method.