Plate buckling due to combined bending and compression using linear finite element method /

Abstract

The objective of this study was to develop new solutions for linear elastic buckling coefficients of rectangular flat plates with various support conditions. Critical buckling coefficients were found for rectangular flat plates subjected to compression and bending on two opposite edges with one free unloaded edge using the finite element method. Plates with different aspect ratios (0.5,0.75, 1, 1.5,2,2.4,2.8, 3.2, 3.6,4) were analyzed. Currently, no solutions are available in the literature for plates subjected to compression and bending with a free unloaded edge. Thin-walled structures have the characteristic of susceptibility of failure by instability or buckling. It is important to the design engineer that accurate methods are available to determine the critical buckling strength. The method developed in this work was verified on problems where closed form mathematical solutions exist. An engineer will be able to use the solutions developed in this work in the design of components that are susceptible to instability failures. Another benefit of this work is to demonstrate to practicing engineers that reliable instability results can be obtained by using standard finite element analysis (FEA) methods. This work considers a small subset of instability problems but the FEA method utilized herein can be effectively used to model a large class of practical instability problems.