Buckling analysis of laminated plates using the extended Kantorovich method and a system of first-order differential equations

The extended Kantorovich method using multi-term displacement functions is applied to the buckling problem of laminated plates with various boundary conditions. The out-of-plane displacement of the buckled plate is written as a series of products of functions of parameter x and functions of parameter y. With known functions in parameter x or parameter y, a set of governing equations and a set of boundary conditions are obtained after applying the variational principle to the total potential energy of the system. The higher order differential equations are then transformed into a set of first-order differential equations and solved for the buckling load and mode. Since the governing equations are first-order differential equations, solutions can be obtained analytically with the out-of-plane displacement written in the form of an exponential function. The solutions from the proposed technique are verified with solutions from the literature and FEM solutions. The bucking loads correspond very well to other available solutions in most of the comparisons. The buckling modes also compare very well with the finite element solutions. The proposed solution technique transforms higher-order differential equations to first-order differential equations, and they are analytically solved for out-of-plane displacement in the form of an exponential function. Therefore, the proposed solution technique yields a solution which can be considered as an analytical solution.