Postbuckling of shear deformable laminated plates under biaxial compression and lateral pressure and resting on elastic foundations

Postbuckling analysis is presented for a simply supported, shear deformable laminated plate subjected to biaxial compression combined with uniform lateral pressure and resting on an elastic foundation. The lateral pressure is first converted into an initial deflection and the initial geometrical imperfection of the plate is also taken into account. The formulations are based on the Reddy's higher-order shear deformation plate theory, and including the plate-foundation interaction. The analysis uses a perturbation technique to determine the buckling loads and the postbuckling equilibrium paths. Numerical examples are presented that relate to the performances of perfect and imperfect, antisymmetrically angle-ply and symmetrically cross-ply laminated plates under combined loading and resting on Pasternak-type or softening nonlinear elastic foundations from which results for Winkler elastic foundations are obtained as a limiting case. The effects played by foundation stiffness, transverse shear deformation, plate aspect ratio, total number of plies, fiber orientation, the biaxial load ratio and initial lateral pressure are studied.