Abstract: The mechanical behavior of composite laminated plates and shells is complex, leading to difficulty in getting solution of stress. Based on the layerwise theory, the layerwise symplectic element including displacement and three out-of-plane stresses are established by combining with the principle of minimum potential energy and HR variational principle. Numerical verification shows that the derivation process of the layerwise symplectic element is simple and the numerical results converge stably. Compared with the incompatible displacement element model, the out-of-plane stress results of the current model are closer to the exact solution in the case of coarser meshes.

Key words: composite laminates, H-R variational principle, layerwise symplectic element, stress analysis