Buckling of Plates on Rotationally and Warping Restrained Supports

The paper deals with elastic buckling of plates having warping and elastically restrained against torsion supports, under uniaxial compression. The minimum energy principle is applied, regarding the isolated plate as part of an infinitely wide stiffened panel, reinforced by longitudinal stiffeners and transverse beams, despite of classical solutions, where two coupled transcendental equations are solved. The displacement field is developed into double sine trigonometric series and the solution convergence, in terms of buckling coefficients, is investigated. Simple design buckling formulas for isolated plate panels, as function of supporting members’ torque and warping rigidity ratios, are derived by curve fitting. Finally, several stiffened panels are analyzed and the proposed formulas are compared with the relevant results obtained by some FE eigenvalue buckling analyses, carried out by ANSYS