Modeling of Lamb Waves in Composites Using a New Third-Order Plate Theory

Abstract

The effect of shear deformation and rotatory inertia should be taken into account in modeling Lamb waves in composite laminates. However, the first and second-order shear deformation plate theories which do not satisfy the stresses free boundary condition are uneconomic approximations, because one has to develop a complicated scheme to compute the shear correction factors. The stresses free boundary condition requires an in-plane displacement field expanded at least as cubic functions of the thickness coordinate. Hence, in this paper, the dispersive curves of Lamb waves in laminates are calculated according to a new third-order shear deformation plate theory considering the boundary condition. The lower anti-symmetric Lamb modes results of the new theory are closest to the exact solutions from 3D elasticity theory compared to several existing plate theories.