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The delamination buckling problem for a rectangular plate made of an orthotropic composite material is studied. The plate contains a band crack whose faces have an initial infinitesimal imperfection. The subsequent development of this imperfection due to an external compressive load acting along the crack is studied through the use of the three-dimensional geometrically nonlinear field equations of elasticity theory for anisotropic bodies. A criterion of initial imperfection is used in determining the critical forces. The corresponding boundary-value problems are solved by employing the boundary-form perturbation technique and the FEM. Numerical results for the critical force are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The buckling of imperfect composite cylinders under concentric and eccentric compression is investigated experimentally and numerically, with particular attention given to the imperfection sensitivity of the shells. A series of glass-fiber-reinforced plastic cylinders have been tested under different load eccentricities to validate the corresponding nonlinear numerical analyses performed in this study. A good agreement between the experimental and numerical results was achieved through use of the ABAQUS/Explicit finite-element code and the introduction of initial imperfections. Both the experimental and the numerical results show that the knockdown factor increases as the loading eccentricity grows. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]