Variation-based cracked laminate analysis revisited and fundamentally extended

The analyses of cracked laminates based on a variational principle and related approaches are appraised in this paper. The limitations of the existing methodology on the analyses of more general laminate configurations have been identified. It has been revealed that the limiting factor is the lack of boundary conditions for uncracked laminae. Natural boundary conditions have then been derived from the variational principle to meet the need. Such boundary conditions are mathematically sound but cannot be simply interpreted from the physical construction of the problem intuitively. A well posed boundary value problem has thus been formulated for laminates containing however many cracked and uncracked laminae. Appropriate mathematical tools can then be employed to solve the boundary value problem. The capability of analysing cracked laminates has been enhanced significantly, as a result.