Effect of random system properties on bending response of thermo-mechanically loaded laminated composite plates

In this paper, effect of random variation in system properties on bending response of geometrically linear laminated composite plates subjected to transverse uniform lateral pressure and thermal loading is examined. System parameters such as the lamina material properties, expansion of thermal coefficients, lamina plate thickness and lateral load are modeled as basic random variables. The basic formulation is based on higher order shear deformation theory to model the system behavior of the composite plate. A C⁰ finite element method in conjunction with the first order perturbation technique procedure developed earlier by authors for the plate subjected to lateral loading is employed to obtain the second order response statistics (mean and variance) of the transverse deflection of the plate. Typical numerical results for the second order statistics of the transverse central deflection of geometrically linear composite plates with temperature independent and dependent material properties subjected to uniform temperature and combination of uniform and linearly varying temperature distribution are obtained for various combinations of geometric parameters, uniform lateral pressures, staking sequences and boundary conditions. The performance of the stochastic laminated composite model is demonstrated through comparison of mean transverse central deflection with those results available in literature and standard deviation of the deflection with an independent Monte Carlo simulation.