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Introduction

The transverse (through-the-thickness) elastic properties of continuous fibre reinforced composite laminated plates, of the type shown in Sketch 1.1, are, to a large extent, dependent upon the properties of the matrix material used to bond the fibres together. For many matrix materials, these properties can be very low compared with those in the direction of the reinforcing fibres, with the result that significant deflections can be caused by through-the-thickness shear stresses which arise in plate bending. In order to take this behaviour into account, it is necessary to obtain values for the shear stiffness terms that relate the transverse shear force resultants to the transverse shear strains. This Item together with the accompanying ESDUpac A8913 presents a Fortran computer program for the determination of these stiffnesses for laminated plates, without restriction on the type of lay-up. The plates are considered to be built up from thin orthotropic homogeneous layers with perfect bonding between them. The layers may have different material elastic properties, thicknesses and orientations of their principal axes of orthotropy. The analysis is also applicable to thick sandwich panels.

This Data Item consists of three parts. Section 1 describes the theoretical solution to the title problem and its limitations in application to practical panels. Section 2 describes the input and output for the program of ESDUpac A8913 and gives example calculations.