Elasto-plastic buckling analysis of laminated plates including interfacial damage

Elasto-plastic buckling of orthotropic laminated plates, which include interfacial damage, is analyzed in detail. Firstly, a novel mixed hardening yield criterion, as an improvement of Hill’s counterpart, is proposed for the orthotropic materials on the basis of the plastic theory. And differing from Hill’s theory, the present yield criterion is related to the spherical tensor of stress. Then, the incremental elasto-plastic constitutive relations of the mixed hardening orthotropic materials are presented. Secondly, the incremental static equilibrium equations for laminated plates including interfacial damage are established based on Von-Karman type theory and the principle of minimum potential energy. Finally, the elasto-plastic buckling of laminated plates are solved by adopting the Galerkin method and iteration scheme. The numerical results show that buckling of the plate occurs easier due to the existence of interfacial damage, and the critical load trends to constant when the interfacial damage approaches a certain degree. Also, the effect of anisotropy on buckling is obvious and the analysis of elasto-plastic buckling is necessary.