Buckling analyses of composite laminate skew plates with material nonlinearity

A nonlinear material constitutive model, including a nonlinear in-plane shear formulation and the Tsai–Wu failure criterion, for fiber–composite laminate materials is employed to carry out finite element buckling analyses for composite laminate skew plates under uniaxial compressive loads. The influences of laminate layup, plate skew angle and plate aspect ratio on the buckling resistance of composite laminate skew plates are presented. Comparing with the linearized buckling loads of the skew plates, one can observer that the nonlinear in-plane shear together with the failure criterion have significant influence on the ultimate loads of the composite laminate skew plates with [±θ]10S and [±θ/90/0]5S layups but not the [α/0]10S layup.