Exact 3D stress analysis of laminated composite plates by sampling surfaces method

A paper focuses on the use of the efficient approach to exact 3D elasticity solutions of cross-ply and angle-ply laminated composite plates. This approach is based on the new method of sampling surfaces (SaS) developed recently by the authors. We introduce inside the nth layer I_n not equally spaced SaS parallel to the midsurface of the plate and choose displacements of these surfaces as fundamental plate unknowns. Such an idea permits the representation of the proposed higher order layer-wise plate theory in a very compact form. This fact gives in turn the opportunity to derive the exact 3D solutions of elasticity for thick and thin laminated composite plates with a prescribed accuracy by utilizing a sufficiently large number of SaS, which are located at interfaces and Chebyshev polynomial nodes.