Effects of Delamination on the Critical Buckling Load of Glass Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Composite Plates

The effects of the delamination in the critical buckling load failure of E-Glass /epoxy composite laminates are analysed. The buckling load of rectangular composite plates is determined by carrying out the experimental work for different aspect ratios of range 2 to 3. The specimens are made with unidirectional fibres of orientation (90°/45°/-45°/0°)s. The width of long 100 mm and 50 mm at the centre of the plate, a single substantial delamination is made at the mid layer produced by Teflon film using hand lay-up technique. The buckling loads of plates were found by using simply supported boundary condition and kept the other side edges free. The experimental buckling loads were found from the graph drawn for vertical displacement vs load. By drawing the graph for the vertical displacement vs. load, the experimental buckling load can be calculated. Using finite element software of ANSYS 10, the experimental results were validated.