Progressive failure of symmetric laminates under in-plane shear: Il-Negative shear

The objective of the present work is to estimate the strength and failure characteristics of symmetric thin square laminates under negative shear load. Two progressive failure analyses, one using the Hashin criterion and the other using a Tensor polynomial criterion, are used in conjunction with the finite element method. First-order shear-deformation theory along with geometric nonlinearity in the von Karman sense has been incorporated in the finite element modeling. Failure loads, associated maximum transverse displacements, locations and modes of failure including the onset of delamination are discussed in detail; these are found to be quite different from those for the positive sheer load reported in Part I of this study (Singh et al. 1998).