Progressive failure prediction of laminated composite thin skew plates under transverse loading using nonlinear strains

A review of literature about industrially important composite skew plates, which are used as roofing and flooring units to cover non-rectangular parallelogram shaped plan areas, shows that the aspect of progressive failure has not received any attention from researchers which is essential to comprehensively understand failure behaviour from initiation to the ultimate stage. In the present approach stiffness degradation of a damaged plate is considered only at the point of damage in the corresponding lamina at all stages of first and progressive failure and the present outputs match excellently with published experimental results. This realistic modelling of failure behaviour is the novelty of this paper. Apart from reporting the failure load values, the failure zones and nature of damage progress on the skew plate surfaces are also presented which are expected to be valuable inputs for non-destructive health monitoring.