Elastoplastic buckling of rectangular plates in biaxial compression/tension

Abstract This paper examines the elastoplastic buckling of a rectangular plate, with various boundary conditions, under uniform compression combined with uniform tension (or compression) in the perpendicular direction. The analysis is based on the standard linear buckling equations and material behaviour is modelled by the small strain J2 flow and deformation theories of plasticity. A detailed parametric study has been made for Al 7075 T6 over a range of plate geometries (a/b=0.25–4,a/h≈20–100) and with three sets of boundary conditions (four simply supported boundaries and the symmetric combinations of clamped/simply supported sides). For sufficiently thin plates we recover with both theories the classical elastic results. However, for thicker plates there is a remarkable difference in the buckling loads predicted by these two theories. Apart from the expected observation that deformation theory gives lower critical stresses than those obtained from the flow theory, we report on the existence of an optimal loading path for the deformation theory model. Buckling loads attained along the optimal path—specified by particular compression/tension ratios—are the highest possible over the entire space of loading histories. By contrast, no similar optimum has been found with the flow theory. This discrepancy in the buckling behaviour, obtained from the two competing plastic theories, provides a possibly new illustration of the plastic buckling paradox.