Buckling of rectangular mindlin plates with internal line supports

Abstract

This paper considers the elastic buckling of rectangular Mindlin plates under normal inplane forces. The plates may have any number of internal line (straight or curved) supports that span between any two edges. Based on the energy functional derived from the incremental total potential energy approach, the newly developed pb-2 Rayleigh-Ritz method is applied for solution. The special feature of this method is the pb-2 Ritz function which consists of the product of (1) a two-dimensional polynomial function and (2) a basic function formed from taking the product of the equations of the boundaries and internal line supports; with each equation raised to appropriate powers as shown herein. The method is convenient for analysts since no discretization is required and very accurate results can be obtained. Buckling load intensity factors for rectangular plates with various boundary conditions and various thickness and aspect ratios are tabulated for designers. These may also serve as benchmark values for the testing of other numerical methods.