Effect of in-plane boundary conditions on buckling and post buckling response of thin plates under uni-axial compression/in-plane shear

The present investigation comprises study on the buckling and the post buckling behaviour of thin plates with and without a cutout. The plate is subjected to a uniform uni-axial compression and/or in-plane shear. Both isotropic and laminated composite plates are considered. The instability behaviour of the plate is governed by its in-plane stress distribution which in turn is dependent on physical parameters like in-plane boundary conditions. In fact this aspect has not been covered effectively in earlier studies. That is why this is the main focus of the present investigation. The finite element analysis has been used to simulate the buckling and the post buckling response of plates with various in-plane boundary conditions using ANSYS v17.2. Results show that in-plane boundary conditions notably influence the buckling load and the post buckling response of plates. The investigation is carried out to obtain stress distribution plots, eigen values, mode shapes and load-displacement curves for a plate with different aspect ratios. The study is also extended to show the effect of in-plane boundary conditions on the buckling and the post buckling response of a [300] angle-ply laminate and a cross-ply laminate plate under uni-axial compression. Effect of aspect ratio of the plate is also taken into consideration.