Meshfree Modelling and Bending Analysis of Skew Laminated Plates resting on Elastic Foundations: Influence of Skewness under Practical Transverse Loading

This paper proposes a meshfree collocation approach based on the multiquadric radial basis function (MQRBF) for the analysis of flexural responses in skew laminated plates resting on elastic foundations under practical transverse loadings. Skew plates are extensively used in aero-nautical, marine, and civil applications where geometric asymmetry is directly linked with design efficiency. However, the presence of coupling between bending and twisting responses due to geometric asymmetry makes the analysis of these structures challenging. Laminated plates are modeled through an equivalent single-layer higher-order shear deformation theory (HSDT) with five independent displacement variables. The energy principle-based derivation of governing differential equations and its discretization by the stable MQRBF method is presented. A computational code in MATLAB is presented and validated through some comparative studies. Particular emphasis has been placed on the assessment of the influence that varying degrees of skewness introduces on stiffness distribution, load transfer, and deflection features that are considerably modified by the introduction of the skew angle. Extensive parametric analyses have been carried out to study the combined influence of the skew angle, span-to-thickness ratio, twoparameter elastic foundation, aspect ratio, orthotropy ratio, and number of layers on the bending behavior of skew laminated plates.