Buckling of the SSCF rectangular orthotropic plate subjected to linearly varying in-plane loading

The paper presents the solution of the buckling problem for an orthotropic rectangular plate having two parallel edges simply supported, one edge clamped and the remaining edge free (the SSCF plate). The plate considered is subjected to a linearly varying in-plane load that can take the form of uniform compression, combination of in-plane bending and uniform compression, or pure in-plane bending. The solution technique involves reduction of the relevant variational buckling equation to a one-dimensional form using the Kantorovich procedure and subsequent application of the generalised Galerkin method. The buckling problems are solved for isotropic and orthotropic plates with various aspect ratios. The analytical solution is verified using the finite-element analysis. The comparisons of computational results demonstrate the appropriateness and efficiency of the approach developed in this work for the calculation of critical loads of composite SSCF plates with various dimensional and stiffness parameters.