First-ply failure of laminated composite plates

Composite laminates offer superior load carrying capacity. Reliable application of such structures requires a knowledge of their stress/strain and failure behavior. Past treatments involved assumptions in both the stress and failure analyses; they become increasingly more difficult when the failure of the microstructure constituents is to be included in the continuum analysis of the laminates. Recognizing the conventional failure criteria used for composite material analyses, this work adopts the first-ply failure criterion by application of a polynomial function and the finite element procedure. The laminates are modeled by the Reissner-Mindlin plate theory that accounts for moderate rotation. This is because shear effects are more pronounced in composite laminates whose transverse shear modulus is low relative to the Young's modulus. Failure loads are obtained for different laminate thicknesses, stacking sequences and aspect ratios and different failure criteria. The results show that predictions made from the maximum stress criterion are nearly the same as the others, except for those obtained by the Hill criterion.