Buckling and vibration of any prismatic assembly of shear and compression loaded anisotropic plates with an arbitrary supporting structure

Abstract The VIPASA computer program accurately treats buckling and vibration of prismatic plate assemblies with a response that varies sinusoidally in the longitudinal direction. In-plane shear loading of component plates produces skewed mode shapes that do not conform to desired support conditions, and this has placed a limitation on the general applicability of VIPASA. This problem is overcome in the present paper by coupling the VIPASA stiffness matrices for different wavelength responses through the method of Lagrangian Multipliers. Supports at arbitrary locations, including support provided by any elastic structure, are included in the theory. Examples illustrate the accuracy and convergence of the method and some of the principal features of the solution. The complete generality and capability of VIPASA have been retained in a computer program VICON that permits constraints and a supporting structure consisting of any number of transverse beam-columns.