ABSTRACT
This chapter considers the bending, stability, and free vibration of unsymmetrical laminated plates. The effect of coupling can be extremely severe; however, the orthotropic solution is rapidly approached as the number of plies is increased. In the case of cross-ply composites, the homogeneous orthotropic solution becomes the limiting case as the number of layers is increased. The method reduces the problem to an equivalent anisotropic bending problem allowing the techniques developed for the analysis of orthotropic and anisotropic plates to be directly utilized. The chapter discusses an approximate method for estimating the effect of bending-extensional coupling. The effect of coupling can be extremely severe; however, the orthotropic solution is rapidly approached as the number of plies is increased. It is interesting to note how rapidly the center deflection. The chapter also considers the free vibration of the cross-ply and angle-ply laminates.
