A post-buckling analysis for isotropic prismatic plate assemblies under axial compression

This paper presents a post-buckling analysis for prismatic plate assemblies made of isotropic materials, The structures are assumed to consist of a series of long flat strips rigidly connected together at their edges, subjected to longitudinal in-plane compressive load. The buckling load and corresponding buckling mode of the structure are first obtained as the results of transcendental eigenvalue problems, which arise when exact solutions to the member differential equations are used to form the stiffness matrix of the plate assemblies. The other post-buckling field functions are also obtained analytically as exact solutions to the member differential equations. Results for the load end-shortening and load-deflection relationships for long prismatic plate assembly examples are obtained and compared with results obtained by other authors. (C) 2000 Elsevier Science Ltd. All rights reserved.