BUCKLING OF RECTANGULAR MINDLIN PLATES WITH TAPERED THICKNESS BY THE SPLINE STRIP METHOD

This paper presents an application of the spline strip method to analyse buckling of rectangular Mindlin plates with linearly tapered thickness in one direction, considering the transverse shear effects and the curvature terms appearing in the expression for loss of potential energy of the applied membrane stresses. To demonstrate the convergence and accuracy of the present method, several examples are solved, and results are compared with those obtained by an analytical method and by other numerical methods. Stable convergence and excellent accuracy are obtained using the higher order spline strip models. Buckling load parameters of rectangular thick plates due to uniform in-plane loads with some boundary conditions are analysed by varying plate-aspect ratios, thickness ratios and tapered ratios.