Accurate equilibrium-based interlaminar stress recovery for isogeometric laminated composite Kirchhoff plates

TL;DR

This paper introduces an accurate method for recovering interlaminar stresses in composite Kirchhoff plates using isogeometric analysis, leveraging equilibrium conditions and high-continuity discretizations for improved precision.

Contribution

It presents a novel post-processing technique for interlaminar stress recovery in isogeometric Kirchhoff plates based on equilibrium enforcement, enhancing stress analysis accuracy.

Findings

Effective stress recovery demonstrated through extensive numerical tests.

High accuracy achieved due to isogeometric discretizations and equilibrium-based post-processing.

Applicable to both Galerkin and collocation formulations.

Abstract

In this paper, we use isogeometric Kirchhoff plates to approximate composite laminates adopting the classical laminate plate theory. Both isogeometric Galerkin and collocation formulations are considered. Within this framework, interlaminar stresses are recovered through an effective post-processing technique based on the direct imposition of equilibrium in strong form, relying on the accuracy and the higher continuity typically granted by isogeometric discretizations. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is proven by extensive numerical tests.