Buckling behavior of compression-loaded symmetrically-laminated angle-ply plates with holes

An approximate analysis for buckling of a rectangular specially-orthotropic plate with a central circular hole is applied to symmetrically-laminated angle-ply plates. Results obtained from finite element analyses and experiments indicate that the approximate analysis predicts accurately the buckling loads of (+/-theta sub m)s plates with integer values of m not below 6 and with hole diameters up to 50 percent of the plate width. Moreover, the results indicate that the approximate analysis can be used to predict the buckling trends of plates with hole diameters up to 70 percent of the plate width. Results of a parametric study indicate the influence of hole size, plate aspect ratio, loading conditions, boundary conditions, and orthotropy on the buckling load. Results are also presented that indicate the relationship of the bending stiffness and the prebuckling load distribution to the buckling load of a plate with a hole.