postbuckling of orthotropic rectangular Plates in Biaxial Compression

A deflection-type perturbation solution is developed for the analysis of buckling and post buckling behavior of orthotropic composite rectangualr plates with simply supported edges in biaxial compression. This asymptotic solution is valid for the elastic plates of any degree of orthotropy and any aspect ratio. In the case of isotropic plates, the present asymptotic expansions can be employed to predict the buckling behavior the same as those in classical theories. The postbuckling interactive plots produced in this study are in close agreement with experiments where most plate theories have failed. It is noted that the buckling interactive correlations for orthotropic composite plates are quite different from those of isotropic plates. These and other observations are discussed.