A mortar approach for the analysis and optimization of composite laminated plates

A mortar method is introduced for the analysis of L-shaped generally-orthotropic thin composite plates. The underlying differential operator is a fourth-order one that calls for interface conditions on the normal displacement as well as on its normal derivative. We therefore move from the few existing approaches for the bi-Laplacian operator and extend it to handle the fourth-order laminated plate operator. However, we do not resort to Lagrange polynomials and relevant quadrature points as frequently done in the field of mortar methods but make use of standard polynomials with exact (symbolic) integration. A few numerical examples concerning the analysis and optimization of laminated composite plates are presented to validate the proposed approach.