Buckling of Laminates with Multiple Through-the-Width Delaminations Using Spring Simulation Model

Delamination is one of the most common failure modes in composite structures. In particular, when the laminated composites are subjected to compressive loads, delamination becomes a constraint in the design process. In this study, the system is modeled as a plate supported by an elastic foundation. The elastic adhesive layer between the buckled sublaminates is represented by some parallel springs. The plate on a discontinuous foundation is treated as a continuous foundation but with added transverse forces at a number of discrete points in the delamination regions to make the net transverse force at each of these points to vanish. The delaminated plates which are analyzed in this study contain one or two through-the-width delaminations.Also, an extensive finite element analysis is performed by using ANSYS5.4 general purpose commercial software, and the results are compared with those obtained by the analytical model. The agreement between the results is very good.