Interlaminar stress distribution of composite laminated plates with functionally graded fiber volume fraction

Various functionally graded design methods have been proposed recently for fiber reinforced composite plates. The laminates with variable fiber spacing along the thickness direction are focused on in this paper. Fiber volume ratio distribution functions are defined separately in each single layer. Classic state space method as well as differential quadrature state space method are utilized here for different boundary and plied conditions. For the latter method, a sub-layer based scheme, which has both high accuracy and less numerical capacity, is suggested for functionally graded plates. Numerical examples indicate that the non-uniform distribution of fibers rearranges the stress field, of which the in-plane stresses are sensitive to the fibers’ distribution, while the transverse stresses are not affected so much. In-plane stresses near interfaces would decrease if the fiber ratio reduces in this region, which provides a method to resolve the interfacial stress concentration problems.