Further Study of Composite Laminates Under Cylindrical Bending

In a series of three papers [1,2,3], the range of applicability of classical laminated plate theory (CPT) in describing the response of composite laminates under static bending has been examined. Briefly, exact solutions within the framework of linear elasticity theory were developed and compared to the respective solutions governed by CPT [4,5,6]. Numerical data calculated based on simple harmonic load distributions have indicated rather wide discrepancy between the two solutions for laminates having low span-to-depth ratios. At high aspect ratios however, the CPT solution is in good agreement with the elasticity solution.