Secondary States of Rectangular Plates

The secondary buckling of rectangular elastic plates is studied as a problem of secondary bifurcation. The nonlinear von Karman plate theory is used in the analysis. The secondary bifurcation points, and the secondary states that bifurcate from them are determined by a previously developed perturbation method. Secondary buckling is related to the phenomenon of “mode-jumping” that is observed in buckling experiments with elastic plates.