Behaviour of laminated circular glass plates

Abstract

Laminated circular glass plates consist of two or more thin glass plates and an interlayer PVB (PolyVinyl Butyral), and are widely used geometric types in modern structures. They can easily undergo large displacements since they are very thin. Their behaviour under large displacements has shown a highly nonlinear characteristic. The mathematical model needs to be developed to simulate this behaviour. The energy integral functional is written for the whole unit, and variations are taken with respect to lateral displacement and radial displacement to obtain the governing differential equations. Then, the nonlinear coupled differential equations are converted to the system of nonlinear algebraic equations by the use of finite difference approach.