| he postbuckling behavior of rectangular orthotropic plates is addressed. The analysis is based on the nonlinear large deflection equations of von Karman, written for specially orthotropic plates which have been transformed into the affine space, and the solution is obtained using the perturbation method. The combinations of three standard boundary conditions are considered. The plates are simply-supported on two loaded edges and the two unloaded side edges are either simply supported-simply supported, or clamped-clamped, or simply supported-clamped, or simply supported-free, or clamped-free. The application of an affine transformation produces generic material constants, D;This form of solution, being generic, allows one to abstract a physical intuition about the postbuckling process for any material or any cross-ply material combination. The generic material constants, D;Furthermore, it is found that the postbuckling behavior is primarily described by only one additional parameter beyond the required for buckling, the generalized rigidity ratio, as... |
