Post-buckling of bamboo reinforced composite plates

Composite materials are preferred as today's material for aerospace structural applications largely because composites provide high specific strength and stiffness. To their advantages, natural fibers such as bamboo, kenaf, jute and flax have been researched significantly for having high effective strength and stiffness and environmental friendly advantages in being renewable, biodegradable and sustainable. While many structures used in aerospace applications are thin and as such susceptible to buckling problem, this paper presents the study on the buckling and post-buckling of bamboo reinforced composite plates (BRCPs), applying the finite element method software of ANSYS APDL. A compressive load was given to the BFRC and linear buckling analysis was conducted first. The determined critical load from this analysis was then used in the non-linear post-buckling analysis to give the post-buckling path of the BRFC. In both linear and non-linear analysis, the effect of BRFC thickness was considered while both angle-ply and cross-ply orientations were used. The results of deflection of a composite plate showed an excellent agreement with past results. The study shows that as the length to thickness ratio (l/t) was increased, critical loads increased as well. Further, the critical loads for the angle-ply BFRCs were higher than the cross-ply counterparts of the same thickness. Similar pattern of behaviour can be seen for the post-buckling paths of the BFRCs.