Unilateral buckling of thin elastic plates by the boundary integral equation method

The unilateral buckling of thin elastic plates, according to Kirchhoff's theory, is studied by using a boundary integral method. A representation for the second member of the equation is given. In the matrix formulatiea, boundary unknowns are eliminated; therefore, the unilateral buckling problem reduces to compute the eigenvalues and the eigenvectors of a matrix depending on the contact zone with the rigid foundation. An iterative process allows this zone and the buckling load to be computed. The capacities of the proposed method are illustrated by four examples.