Shear buckling coefficient: proposal for tapered steel plates

This paper presents a new proposal for estimation of critical load for non-prismatic, thin plates simply supported on four edges subjected to shear. The research included wide parametric studies using more than 500 samples. The parameters taken into account were the web thickness, the panel aspect ratio and the inclination angle. The influence of each was analysed separately and then some simplifications were made in order to find coherent expressions to describe the behaviour of the studied panels. The numerical results were then used to validate the solution proposed in EN 1993-1-5. As a result of this comparison, it is concluded that new design formulations are needed for tapered plates with a considerable slope. Based on previous research by the authors concerning four various geometrical typologies of tapered panels, four expressions for the shear buckling coefficient k(phi) are proposed.