Free vibration and buckling analysis of higher order laminated composite plates using the isogeometric approach

This research paper presents a higher order isogeometric laminated composite plate finite element formulation. The isogeometric formulation is based on NURBS (non-uniform rational B-splines) basis functions of varying degree. Plate kinematics is based on the third order shear deformation theory (TSDT) of Reddy in order to avoid shear locking. Free vibration and the buckling response of laminated composite plates are obtained and efficiency of the method is considered. Numerical results with different element order are presented and the obtained results are compared to analytical and conventional numerical results as well as existing isogeometric plate finite elements.