6 Buckling of Plates

When a thin elastic plate is subjected to compressive in-plane axial loads, in conjunction with small applied lateral loads or imperfections in the plate, the in-plane deflections increase gradually with an increase in the applied loads up to a certain critical point. Beyond this point a slight increase in axial loads causes a large and sudden increase in the deflection. This phenomenon, called buckling, is the subject of this chapter for circular and rectangular plates. A more comprehensive treatment of this subject is given by Timoshenko (Timoshenko and Gere, 1961), Bloom (Bloom and Coffin, 2001), Szilard (Szilard, 1974), and Iyangar (Iyengar, 1988).