Design considerations for symmetrically laminated plates with cutouts

Earlier [I], it was shown that certain reinforced holes may be designed for elastic, isotropic plane sheets that do not alter the stress state in the cut sheet, for particular types of planar loading. In this work, this methodology is extended to symmetrically laminated composite plates which are under planar loading, and additionally pure bending moments. Since these two types of loading lead to uncoupled governing equations, they are treated separatly in two parts. The shape of the cutout and the cross-sectional area of the reinforcement are determined in closed form. The reinforcement is modeled as a one-dimensional rodlbeam type structural element.