Compressional Stability Behavior of Composite Plates with Multiple Through-the-Width Delaminations

In this paper, the compressive behavior of composite laminates with multiple through-the-width delaminations is investigated analytically. The analytical method is based on the CLPT theory and its formulation is developed on the basis of the Rayleigh-Ritz approximation technique to analyze the buckling and post-buckling behavior of the delaminated laminates. The method can handle both local buckling of the delaminated sublaminates and global buckling of the whole plate. Also the three-dimensional 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.