Buckling and vibration of stepped, symmetric cross-ply laminated rectangular plates

This paper presents the exact buckling loads and vibration frequencies of multi-stepped symmetric cross-ply laminated rectangular plates having two opposite edges simply supported while the other two edges may have any combination of free, simply supported, and clamped conditions. An analytical method that uses the Lévy solution method and the domain decomposition technique is proposed to determine the buckling loads and natural frequencies of stepped laminated plates. Buckling and vibration solutions are obtained for symmetric cross-ply laminated rectangular plates having two-, three- and four-step thickness variations.