Thermal Buckling Behaviours of Laminated Composite Trapezoidal Panel under Thermally Induced Loads

The study presents the effect of uniformly distributed various thermal loads on the thermal buckling characteristics of trapezoidal laminates by developing finite element formulation. Towards this, the trapezoidal panel is discretised by using a 9-noded heterosis plate element by incorporating the effect of shear deformations and rotary inertia. The effectiveness off the presents formulation is verified by correlating present findings with the accessible literature. The present study involves the effect of various parameters like the intensity of temperature, trapezoidal shape, ply-orientation, panel edge conditions, panel width to thickness ratio etc. It is observed from the study that the trapezoidal shape and its boundary conditions significantly affect the thermal bucking characteristics of thin panels.