Computationally Efficient yet Accurate Analysis of Composite Plate

Many primarily loaded aircraft structure such as skin panels, have the form factor of plates or shells. The Variational Asymptotic Method (VAM) is used to systematically reduce the dimensionality of such structures by taking advantage of the smallness of their thickness vis-a-vis their other dimensions. VAM systematically reduces the 3D elasticity problem into a linear 1-D through-the-thickness analysis and a geometrically nonlinear 2-D plate analysis. The reduced order 2-D model, which is transformed into Reissner-like model, is used to predict 3-D displacement, 3-D stress and 3-D strain. The significant feature of VAM is that it does not use any ad-hoc assumptions on the displacement and stress fields in order to derive the reduced model. Present paper deals with analysis of a composite plate under bending and shear using VAM. The 3-D results recovered from VAM (1-D+2-D) are compared with that obtained from commercial 3-D finite element analysis. A comparative study is carried out to validate the plate results. Acceptable engineering accuracy of the present approach amidst major savings in computational resources is demonstrated with supporting data for both accuracy and efficiency