A macro-micro analytical approach for the anti-penetrating contact problem at the interfaces of the delamination in symmetrically cross-plied,fiber-reinforced rectangular laminates is presented in this paper.The laminate is simply supported and subjected to a uniform transverse load with a through-width delamination buried at the center position.A contact factor is defined to characterize the contact effect and determined using the micro-mechanics of composite material.By analyzing the kinematics of nonlinear deformation at the interfaces of the delamination,the contact force is derived.Asymptotic solutions from perturbation analysis are presented.It is found that the deformation of the laminate involves a global deflection and a local buckling.The antipenetrating contact effects are characterized by the local buckling and are intrinsic properties of the laminates,relying only on the geometries of the delamination and the material properties.Parametric analyses show that the location and size of the contact areas and the distribution of the contact force are hardly affected by the aspect ratio.
The conventional approach to analysis the buckling of rectangular laminates containing an embedded delamination subjected to the in-plane loading is to simplify the laminate as a beam-plate from which the predicted buckling load decreases as the length of the laminate increases. Two-dimensional analyses are employed in this paper by extending the one-dimensional model to take into consideration of the influence of the delamination width on the buckling performance of the laminates. The laminate is simply supported containing a through width delamination. A new parameterβ defined as the ratio of delamination length to delamination width is introduced with an emphasis on the influence of the delamination size. It is found that （i） when the ratio β is greater than one snap-through buckling prevails, the buckling load is determined by the delamination size and depth only; （ii） as the ratio β continues to increase, the buckling load will approach to a constant value. Solutions are verified with the well established results and are found in good agreement with the latter.
