Buckling of Compressively Loaded Orthotropic Edge Reinforced Plates

Abstract- Buckling behavior of compressively loaded orthotropic composite plates with stiffened unloaded edges are investigated. The plate is considered to be rectangular with simply supported loaded edges and reinforced by arbitrary cross-sectional flanges at one or both of the unloaded edges. The reinforced unloaded edge is considered to be unsupported, and different boundary conditions are considered for the unloaded edge without reinforcement. Exact solutions for the elastic buckling of the plate with different boundary conditions are derived from the governing equations. Also, approximate closed-form solutions for the buckling load are derived for the same problem. Buckling curves for the plate are presented for the plate and the results are compared to the results of finite element analysis. Keywords - , , ,