A critical review and some results of recently developed refined theories of fiber-reinforced laminated composites and sandwiches

A critical review of literature pertinent to the subject matter of this paper was carried out under the following two broad headings: free vibration and transient dynamics. Each of these groups describes the various theoretical developments in fiber reinforced laminated composite and sandwich plates. The theoretical developments are further classified according to the refinement/accuracy of the theories developed, such as the classical theory, the first-order shear deformation theory, and the three-dimensional elasticity/higher-order shear deformation theories. The present literature review is limited to linear free vibration and transient dynamic analyses, and geometric nonlinear transient response of multilayer sandwich/fiber-reinforced composite plates. A comparative study of recently developed refined theories in conjunction with the C° isoparametric finite element formulation has been made and the conclusions were drawn based on the literature review and the refined theories results. In order to compare the present results with the available results and to provide an easy means for future comparisons by other investigators, the numerical results are presented in tabular form