Large deformation analysis of moderately thick laminated plates on nonlinear elastic foundations by DQM

In this paper, the nonlinear behavior of symmetric and antisymmetric cross ply, thin to moderately thick, elastic rectangular laminated plates resting on nonlinear elastic foundations are studied using differential quadrature method (DQM). The first-order shear deformation theory (FSDT) in conjunction with the Green’s strain and von Karman hypothesis are assumed for modeling the nonlinear behavior. Elastic foundation is modeled as shear deformable with cubic nonlinearity. The differential quadrature (DQ) discretized form of the governing equations with the various types of boundary conditions are derived. The Newton–Raphson iterative scheme is employed to solve the resulting system of nonlinear algebraic equations. Comparisons are made and the convergence studies are performed to show the accuracy of the results even with a few number of grid points. The effects of thickness-to-length ratio, aspect ratio, number of plies, fiber orientation and staking sequence on the nonlinear behavior of cross ply laminated plates with different boundary conditions resting on elastic foundations are studied.