Structural failure is initiated when a material is stressed beyond its strength limit. Determination of failure loads and failure location are one of the most important problems in design structures. This paper analyzed the failure of the hat-type laminated composite plate under bending load. Based on Reissner-Mindlin plate theory and isoparametric rectangular plate elements with five degree of freedom per node, an algorithm and Matlab code were built to computed the stresses and bending failure load of the folded composite plate according to Tsai-Wu and Maximum stresses criterions. The numerical results are reliable when compared with the published results in the literature for some specific cases.
Keyword
failure analysis, folded composite plate, Tsai-Wu criterion, Maximum stress criterion, Mindlin plate theory
